The article provides an overview of ranking systems including its historical evolution, use of rankings by different stakeholders, ranking indicators, merits and demerits of different ranking systems and performance of Indian universities in in past one decade in global ranking systems. The article briefly describes nine global ranking systems and compares them based on weightage assigned to different categories of indicators and source of data used for ranking of HEIs. Lastly, article provides statistical inter-correlation amongst various ranking systems as well as intra-correlation within ranking systems at interval of five years (2011:2015; and 2016:2020) and 10 years (2011-2020).

This article analyses data on five years of India rankings to assess its impact on performance parameters of institutions of higher education on four (out of five) broad categories of parameters, namely i) Teaching, Learningand Resources; ii) Graduation Outcome; iii) Outreach and Inclusivity; and iv) Perception. The analysis on data onfour years of India Rankings, i.e. 2017 to 2020 on various performance parameters of HEIs in engineering discipline provides an interesting insight and reveals that participating institutions are making strenuous effort to improve their performance on various parameters or sub-parameters identified under NIRF. The analyses reflect that performance of  remaining  eligible  institutions  has  improved  on  most  of  the  ranking  parameters  in  comparison  to  the100  top-ranked  institutions  over  a  period  of  four  years  of  ranking,  i.e.  from  2017-2020.

This article analyses data on five years of India Rankings to assess its impact on performance parameters of institutions of higher education in terms of publications, citations, patents, highly-cited publications and research funding under broad category of parameter named “Research and Professional Practices”. The analysis on data on five years of India Rankings, i.e. 2016 to 2020 on various performance parameters of HEIs provides an interesting insight and reveals that participating institutions are making strenuous effort to improve their performance on various parameters or sub-parameters identified by the NIRF for ranking of HEIs. It is note that the number of publications, citations, and highly-cited publications (HCP) by eligible applicant institutions have increased exponentially over a period of five years from 2016 to 2020. It is interesting to note that per cent of publications, citations, and HCP by the 100 top-ranked institutions has decreased with corresponding increase of publications, citations, and HCP of the remaining institutions. This trend indicates that a good number of remaining institutions have not only intensified their research and publications activities but are also attracting their share of citations. It is also observed that a significant number of NIRF eligible applicants did not have any publication, however, per cent of institutions having “0” publications have decreasing gradually every year from 2017 to 2020. Noticeable and consistent increase in total publications of India, NIRF Eligible Applicants, 100 top-ranked institutions and remaining institutions in Overall category was noticed during past four years, i.e. 2017 to 2020. However, per cent increase in publications of the 100 top-ranked institutions was the highest in overall category.

Ranking of higher education institutions (HEI) is a convenient and easily understandable method of evaluation and assessment. An ordinal number assigned to an HEI by a ranking system represents its comparative position in a list of ranked institutions based on marks obtained by it on various performance parameters or indicators. Ranking of HEIs have been lauded and criticised simultaneously. University rankings are often criticised for methodology used, choice of indicators and weightage assigned to them, focus on science, technology and English language publications, assessment of institutions as whole (instead of individual program) and the practice of assigning an ordinal number or a rank to represent quality of an HEI. At the same time, university rankings are lauded for serving as information tools for students, researchers, funding agencies, policy makers and other stakeholders as well as for instilling a competitive spirit amongst institutions to perform better in ranking systems. However, most experts agree that rankings are here to stay in the education market place. As such, although ranking system cannot measure quality of education and research in absolute term, it does serve as indicator to various aspects of quality in higher education, which, in turn, can be used by institutions themselves for improving their performance on these parameters. While universities are welcomed to use rankings for improving their performance, ranking systems should not dictate university policy, either at a national or institutional level, but should be used as a source of information for guiding policies that should be decided according to the needs of the university’s own community, traditions, market niche, national role and so on1.

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