An obsession with ranking is harming India’s universities

For Preliminary Examination: Current events of national and international importance

For Mains Examination: GS II - Polity & Governance

Context:

In this digital age, we reduce everything to numbers. This trend has consumed the education ecosystem, as seen in the rise of global ranking agencies, which assign ranks to universities across the world every year. India has its own National Institutional Ranking Framework to rank universities in the country

Read about:

How Ranking Systems Work in Higher Education?

National Institute Ranking Framework 

Key takeaways:

• In today’s digital era, everything is increasingly reduced to numerical values. This shift has significantly influenced the education system, particularly with the growing influence of global ranking agencies that assess and rank universities worldwide each year. In India, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) serves as the domestic system for ranking higher education institutions.
• A university’s mission is to educate and mentor future citizens, as well as to produce and disseminate knowledge through research. Teaching and research represent two integral parts of a university's role—knowledge creation and its spread. A university must excel in both these areas to meet its responsibilities toward students and society.
• Additionally, universities have broader social and economic impacts. Attempting to encapsulate a university's diverse functions within a single rank is overly simplistic, yet this is what current ranking systems claim to do.

Excessive Focus on Research

• Global university rankings prioritize research activities disproportionately. Research output is measured by criteria such as the number of publications, the impact factor of the journals they appear in, the amount of research funding secured, and the number of PhD students enrolled and graduated.
• These quantitative measures fail to capture the quality, relevance, or societal impact of research. Despite recognizing these shortcomings, Indian universities are still engaged in the race for rankings.
• A higher global rank increases a university’s visibility and attracts international students, faculty, academic partners, philanthropists, and donors. Both universities and the government often modify policies in pursuit of better rankings.
• A university without a rank risks being overlooked, underscoring the power global rankings now hold.
• India has adopted elements of the American education model, which emphasizes free market capitalism and intense private sector competition. To boost the global ranking of its top institutions, the Indian government established the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA), which mobilizes market resources to provide loans at competitive interest rates for universities aspiring for global recognition.
• At the same time, several public higher education institutions were granted full autonomy, including financial independence. As a result, the government is no longer obligated to fund these institutions, which must now generate revenue by increasing student fees.
• This is seen as a beneficial strategy for both the universities and the government—universities aim to improve their rankings, and the government reduces its financial burden.
• However, if pursuing rankings comes at the cost of the primary role of educating students (which rankings don’t adequately measure), this is not a true win for either party. Moreover, it fails to serve the interests of economically disadvantaged students.

The Role of Teaching and Mentoring

• The metrics-driven approach to higher education has negatively impacted the teaching profession. The overwhelming focus on research has sidelined other essential functions like teaching.
• Job candidates for university positions are often evaluated based on the number of research papers they’ve produced, the impact factors of the journals they’ve published in, and their citation counts, rather than their effectiveness as teachers and mentors.
• Once employed, faculty members' career progression is similarly determined by metrics like research funding and the number of PhDs they supervise. This focus on quantifiable outputs overlooks their teaching abilities, which are critical to the educational mission of universities.
• Unlike research, teaching is difficult to measure with metrics. It involves intangible qualities that numbers cannot reflect. Consequently, teaching has become a lesser priority in universities.
• For many faculty members, writing research papers or securing grant funding takes precedence over teaching, which is now viewed as a distraction from the "important" task of conducting research. Professors have essentially become contractors focused on producing research to improve their institution’s ranking.

Creating Two Faculty Tracks

• While research is undoubtedly vital for driving innovation, it cannot be an excuse to neglect teaching, which prepares students for real-world challenges. Universities should consider creating separate tracks for research-oriented and teaching-oriented faculty.
• Although faculty members may have interests beyond their primary track, they should not be expected to excel in both areas simultaneously. Otherwise, frustration and lack of commitment could arise, weakening the very individuals who are crucial to a university’s success.
• Universities must recognize that the content and potential societal impact of a research paper are more significant than the impact factor of the journal or the number of citations. Teaching should be recognized as an essential function, and educators should be encouraged to improve curricula.
• Instead of relying on metrics, universities should use thoughtful, unbiased evaluation methods to foster a culture that values both research and teaching. Both areas contribute to the overall mission of higher education institutions.
• The current system, which prioritizes metrics—coined as "metricocracy"—is mistakenly equated with meritocracy. This approach has transformed education into a market product rather than a fundamental right and responsibility of the state.
• Knowledge is treated as a commodity rather than a tool for human growth, and students are viewed as customers rather than future citizens.
• This flawed model undermines academic rigor, stifles creativity, and fails to adequately prepare students for life after graduation. It is detrimental to future generations

Follow Up Question