National rankings place IIT-Madras as the top university for the fifth year, IISC tops Varsity

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras has maintained its position as the nation's top institution of higher learning, taking the top spot in the most recent national rankings that Minister of State for Education Rajkumar Ranjan Singh unveiled on Monday for a fifth year in a row.

No significant surprises were found in the results of the most recent National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) edition, as the IITs continued to dominate most categories. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Madras also won the top rank in engineering for the eighth year in a row and was rated as the second-best research institution in the nation, just missing out on a first place by 2.2 marks to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.

It's interesting to note that IISc, which the QS World University Rankings named the best research university in the world, ahead of Harvard University, Princeton University, and MIT, was bumped to second place in the "overall" category for the fifth year in a row. A closer examination of the score distribution reveals that IISc (with 83.09 marks) trails IIT-Madras (86.69 marks) in areas including student strength, online education, published and awarded patents, and the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Additionally, Institutes of National Importance created by a Parliamentary Act predominate in this category. 36 INIs, including IITs and NITs, 26 state universities, and seven central universities make up the 100 institutions in the "overall" category.

IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kanpur, All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi, IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Roorkee, IIT-Guwahati, and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) all earned rankings from third to tenth in the "overall" category. The top 10 institutions in this group mostly maintain their places from the previous year's rankings, with AIIMS rising three spots to number 6 this time around.

The NIRF-2023 evaluated 5,543 higher education institutions in 13 areas, including "overall" colleges, research institutions, medical, engineering, management, legal, pharmacy, dental, agriculture and allied sectors, and innovation. This year, a new category called agriculture was added.

The participating institutions were evaluated on five criteria — teaching, learning and resources (30%); research and professional practice (30%); graduation outcomes (20%); outreach and inclusivity (10%); and perception (10%).

IISc, JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jadavpur University, and Banaras Hindu University are the top five universities in the bracket, in that order. Private ownership is present in about half of the top 100 universities. Manipal Academy of Higher Education-Manipal is one of them, coming in at number six, followed by Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham at number seven, Vellore Institute of Technology at number eight, Saveetha Institute of Medical and Technical Sciences at number thirteen, Siksha 'O' Anusandhan at number fifteen, and Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology at number sixteen. It's interesting to note that Ashoka University, which debuted on the NIRF in 2021 at 95th place and rose to 88th rank last year, isn't on the list of top 100 universities this time.