The year 2022 could be momentous for the future of education across the world. Covid brought life to a halt, including education in physical classrooms in the precincts of schools and colleges. Students instead took their place in front of their computer screens, as teachers struggled to recreate the spirit of the classroom online and keep the students engaged while educational institutes had to adapt teaching and examination methods to virtual modes. The pandemic wrought great disruption in the education sector.
This year has seen India and the world making a slow return to a ‘normal’ whose contours may not be as we remember them. For the moment, schools and colleges have reopened, physical exams are back and students and teachers are interacting in classrooms, not on digital platforms. However, even as things seem the same, they have changed. Digital learning has opened up multiple dimensions and opportunities in pedagogy. Technology has entered the classroom to re-energise classical modes of teaching and help teachers and students strive for better learning outcomes.
While necessity is the mother of that reform, a long-overdue change in the college admission process came this May as a considered decision. This July, colleges under 89 universities, including all central ones, will admit students into their undergraduate and post-graduate courses based on their performance in CUET, a Common University Entrance Test. To be conducted by the National Testing Agency, this examination is expected to evaluate the conceptual learning of students and their ability to think logically. “Without a sound knowledge and understanding—not memorised answers—of what is taught in schools, a student cannot expect to do well in CUET,” says Professor M. Jagadesh Kumar, chairman, University Grants Commission.
This means that the unrealistic cut-offs for admission in colleges, particularly in Delhi University, will be a thing of the past. With the method of marking varying across boards, children in state boards often fare worse than their counterparts in other boards. CUET will provide a level playing field. Students across India, irrespective of their performance in the 10+2 board exam, can aspire for admission to their desired course in prestigious colleges. In this changed scenario, the 26th India Today Best Colleges Survey, conducted by reputed market research agency Marketing and Development Research Associates (MDRA), assumes added significance.
Graphics by Tanmoy Chakraborty
For over two decades, this survey has been recognised as the last word in the evaluation of the country’s colleges. Every year, it provides the most accurate and detailed information on the performance of various colleges across five parameters—‘Intake Quality and Governance’, ‘Academic Excellence’, ‘Infrastructure and Living Experience’, ‘Personality and Leadership Development’ and ‘Career Progression and Placement’. With transparent scoring in each parameter, it allows students a comparative assessment of the colleges they want to join. In the CUET application, students have to indicate their preferred course and college. We hope that the results of the India Today Best Colleges survey will help them make more informed decisions.
The survey is also useful as it takes note of not just the winners with a legacy but also of the relatively new colleges that show incremental improvement in their performance. Educationists acknowledge that this process has encouraged the spread of quality higher education to many places, beyond the small clutch of metros. The survey identifies the top three colleges in the major Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, making the ranking of higher education institutes much more inclusive.
Education in India is a serious investment. Every parent and student wants to know the employment and remuneration potential of a degree in a particular course. This survey meticulously provides details of colleges offering the best return on investment, campus placements with the highest salary and also the lowest fees. Coming from a credible and verified source, such information can help parents and students make critical decisions.
And that’s the ultimate goal and achievement of the India Today Best Colleges Survey—to serve as a reliable almanac on the state of college education in India. It’s a responsibility the survey has fulfilled for the past two decades, documenting every change and development in the nation’s collegescape, and heralding the arrival of every new star on the horizon.
METHODOLOGY
How the Colleges were Ranked
With more than 42,000 institutes of higher education in India, this 26th edition of the India Today Group’s annual ranking of colleges intends to make it easy for aspirants to make critical career decisions based on a rich information base and data. Over the years, this ranking has become the gold standard for stakeholders such as recruiters, parents, alumni, policymakers, the general public and institutions. Since 2018, the survey has been conducted in association with reputed Delhi-based market research agency Marketing & Development Research Associates (MDRA). For this year, work on the ground was done between January and June. Colleges were ranked across 14 streams—arts, science, commerce, medical, dental sciences, engineering, architecture, law, mass communication, hotel management, BBA, BCA, social work and fashion design.
To arrive at an objective ranking, MDRA carefully attuned more than 112 performance indicators in each stream to enable a comprehensive and balanced comparison of colleges. These indicators were clubbed under five broad parameters: ‘Intake Quality and Governance’, ‘Academic Excellence’, ‘Infrastructure and Living Experience’, ‘Personality and Leadership Development’ and ‘Career Progression and Placement’. In addition, there was an attempt to gauge how colleges prepared to handle the pandemic.
To give more realistic, relevant and accurate information, MDRA evaluated colleges based on current year data. The tables also give parameter-wise scores for deeper insights on key aspects of decision-making by various stakeholders.
The ranking was done in multiple steps…
- An extensive desk review of MDRA’s database and secondary research was conducted to prepare a list of colleges in each stream. Only those colleges offering full-time, in-classroom courses and that have had at least three batches pass out till 2021 were considered. Undergraduate courses were ranked in 12 streams, while postgraduate courses were evaluated for mass communication and social work.
- Experts with rich experience in their fields were consulted to frame the parameters and sub-parameters for various streams. Indicators critical to establishing the best colleges were meticulously determined and relative weights finalised. For fair comparison on year-on-year basis, weightages of parameters stayed unchanged from the past two years.
- Comprehensive objective questionnaires were designed for each of the 14 streams factoring in these performance indicators and were put up in the public domain—on the websites of india today and MDRA. MDRA directly contacted about 10,000 colleges fulfilling the eligibility criteria seeking objective data for verification. Attested hard and soft copies were sought and 1,614—55 more colleges than last year—eligible institutes submitted institutional data along with voluminous supporting documents within the stipulated deadline.
- On receipt of the objective data from participating colleges, MDRA verified the information. In case of insufficient/incorrect data, respective colleges were asked to provide complete, correct and updated information.
- Perceptual survey of these colleges was carried out among 1,781 well-informed respondents (544 senior faculty members, 306 recruiters/ professionals, 382 career accelerators and 549 final year students) across 27 cities, divided into four zones.
North: Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Lucknow, Kota, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Roorkee
East: Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Patna and Raipur
West: Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Indore, Panaji and Nagpur
South: Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi and Coimbatore
- National and zonal rankings were taken from them in their respective field of experience and given 75 per cent and 25 per cent weightage respectively. Institutes were also rated on a 10-point rating scale on each of the five parameters.
- While computing objective scores, aggregate data was not used alone; data was normalised on the basis of the number of students for fair comparison. The total scores arrived from objective and perception survey were added in the ratio of 60:40—for 11 professional courses—while a ratio of 50:50 was taken for academic courses—arts, science and commerce—to get the final combined score.
- A large team of researchers, statisticians and analysts worked on this project. The MDRA core team, led by executive director Abhishek Agrawal, included project director Abnish Jha, assistant research manager Vaibhav Gupta, research executive Aditya Srivastava and executive EDP Manveer Singh.