How not to do rankings?
April 1st, 2009
Recently Educationtimes.com, a part of of Times of India, together with Gfk Mode, has done a ranking of universities across India in various disciplines. There methodology, in their own words, was as follows:
This survey was open to prominent universities across India and invitations were sent to 225 universities.
Among the 225 prominent universities invited, 136 participated. This constitutes around 61% participation.
Some universities refused to participate. Whereas many universities could not provide the required information within our time frame.
The contact persons at the universities were: the registrars, deputy registrars, principal, dean or the administrative heads.
That is it. They sent the surveys. Regardless of whether people participated or not; regardless of the veracity of what was given back; they made a ranking.
The parameters they used may seem reasonable to many, but to me there is a very simple way to rank Universities and Colleges in India. Just use faculty quality as the first parameter and if their is a tie then use the student quality as the second parameter. That’s it!
Entry Filed under: Ranking
2 Writeup Add your own
1. Srinivas Nayak | April 2nd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Dear Sir,
I agree on your point. It is never correct, statistically, that without participation of approximately 40% of the population any such ranking can be done!
To your simple parameter list I would like to add one more…the physical facilities provided by the institution.
I understand that, teacher and student, the quality of these two, are enough to judge the quality of an institution, however for practical experience/education, the quality of physical facilities seems to be the third
parameter.
Apart from these, if we go on increasing the parameter list, I think we are simply increasing the complexity and decreasing the clarity.
2. sudip gupta | April 19th, 2009 at 11:30 pm
The info given by Mr. anonymous is wrong as per my knowledge.
I am a 2008 passout of SRM university which topped the ranking and trust me, the only places where SRMU lacks is teaching,students and management.
Rest is number 1.
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