CHENNAI / COIMBATORE:Anna University stood sixth in the current National Institutional Ranking Framework released on Monday by the Ministry of Human Resource Development. While IIT Madras was second in the overall category, Loyola College secured second position and Women Christian College secured tenth position in the college category.
The ranking was based on six categories - Overall, Engineering, Management, Universities, Colleges and Pharmacy. While IIT Madras stood second in the overall category, which is a new addition, it retained its first position in the Engineering category like last year with a score of 87.96. In the case of Anna University, while in the Engineering category it secured eighth position with a score of 63.97, in the University category it stood sixth with a score of 56.50, and secured the 13th position in the overall category. It also secured 23rd position in Management.
The parameters for ranking of colleges were based on five categories: teaching; learning and resources; research and professional practice; graduation outcomes; and outreach, inclusivity and perception. The parameters comprise student strength including doctoral students, faculty-student ratio with emphasis on permanent faculty, total budget and its utilisation, combined metric for publication, combined per cent for placement, higher studies, median salary, percentage of students from other states and countries, percentage of women, peer perception and others.
Reacting to the ranking, IIT Madras director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said, “We did better than last year. This ranking also shows our improvement in comparison to other institutes.” Certain data were not asked unlike last year, like that of short courses for outreach and inclusivity, he shared.
Anna University officials said the university was able to secure the high rank due to significant contribution made by the faculty members in teaching, research and extensional activities in various frontiers in science and technology. “A sum of `23.1 crore has been sanctioned in the year 2015-16 to carry out research and development in biomedical engineering and instrumentation and developing healthcare systems,” said an official.
Apart from the overall category, this year the college category was introduced. While Loyola College secured second position with a score of 68.68 in the college category, Women’s Christian College secured tenth position with 57.37 score and Madras Christian College ranked 12th and scored 55.44.
Loyola College principal M Arockiyasami Xavier said that the college received 100 on 100 in the research area. “We have 1,673 citations in the Web of Science and Scopus, which is the largest abstract and citation database of literature. We have 2,044 citations in arts and commerce. We concentrate on quality research and publication. We are also proud of teaching using smart learning techniques, visually challenged students and remedial coaching for poor students,” he said adding that nearly 100 faculty members volunteered for mentoring. “We also have a separate department called Human Excellence Department and we have several outreach programmes,” he said.
Coimbatore based Amrita University emerged as the Number 1 private university and 9th best university in the NIRF ranking. “This is a testament to the tradition of academic excellence and outstanding faculty that Amrita University is known for since its inception in 2003. We maintain one of the best staff-student ratio of 1:10,” said P Venkat Rangan, Vice Chancellor, Amrita University.
The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore moved up from its 40th position last year to 17th this year. In the overall category also TNAU got the 28th rank. TNAU Vice Chancellor K Ramasamy said, “We have increased our research capabilities, invested in equipment and facilities and also helped in student’s performance in terms of employment potential.”
However, Bharathiar University in Coimbatore, which was ranked 14th last year has now slipped to 28th position. Commenting on this, Vice Chancellor A Ganapathy said, “In terms of research contribution, we are still in the 14th place. This year, student diversity was also included as a criterion, which resulted in more private institutions performing better than us.”