The period of admission to various colleges is a time when students grow anxious. Moreover it is a time of increased stress for the colleges as well. Various media groups perform the task of ranking institutes, which students, parents and public eagerly await to make a decision on which college to join while the administration, faculty and even alumni of the institute await such ranking with fear. Those who organize the whole process of ranking speak high of the entire process of assessment involved.

Multitude of factors is measured which includes the infrastructure, the faculty, the student teacher ratio, the placement, etc. The quality of input which includes the quality of faculty and infrastructure is examined in detail, but quite often the indices used in measuring the quality of output are inadequate. In most cases the output is measured based on the proportion of the students who are placed. In fact perception is given more importance than facts and the final ranking is a result of combination of perceptual ranks and factual data. It is quite interesting that the rankings are dominated by usual players, with small variations in order to bring a sense of credibility to these rankings. Those on the top enumerate the reasons for their success, while those down on the list gets no attention.

The mismatch of criteria and reality

While the practice of ranking educational institutions happens across the globe, the criteria that are followed in India remains skin deep and distant from reality. For instance, a ranking made based on the social commitment of medical schools demonstrated that medical schools that were located in the urban areas and that received huge research funding ranked low. The ranking based on social commitment differed significantly from those based on reputation and research funding. As a part of social commitment, schools should encourage graduates to work in remote areas and with the backward population.

The pitfalls in the ranking systems followed

Ranking systems categorizes colleges into good school, good graduate; bad school, bad graduate; which is simple and lazy. The ranking systems in India adopt non systematic method of collecting information such as expert opinion and it is often based on unofficial information. Along with such opinion, they add factors such as infrastructure, student teacher ratio etc to make it comprehensive. These results are claimed to be complete in grading schools and those rankings are passed directly on to the graduates from those schools. But these ranking in no sense reflect the quality of the rankings and the Indian priorities are never considered.

Differing priorities as a result of regional requirements

Criteria such as research funding, research output, and state of the art technology, while being important, gives importance to the social need of the upper class and the urban dwellers and may be fit in western priorities. Such criteria does not take into account the priorities in India that require urgent attention such as, its impact on health, social impact, economic impact and improvement in the quality of life of the common man which forms the majority in  India. Providing training that will mould graduates to work with Indian and Western corporate will not be among the list of priorities as far as India is considered while major portion of its population lives in poverty, do not have access to clean water, lack proper sanitation, nutrition, basic education, and health care and suffers from diseases that are preventable. The practices that are considered to be universal and authentic, which is considered to be superior to local practices, cannot be applied in the case of regional concerns and context.  The Indian higher education which is based on the universal and authentic concepts is not suitable in the Indian context where we have different concerns from that of the west.

Ignoring the needs and aspirations of the majority

Education is based on the fact that knowledge does not add flesh and muscles to the skeleton of culture. It is the culture that determines the knowledge. The main role of education is to transmit societal values that will prepare the youth for their social inheritance. The Indian higher education caters to the needs of the elite and the privileged, while ignoring the needs of the majority and this line of thinking requires review. Research activities in Indian institutes are centered on the western theme, the output of which does not match the Indian requirements.

Catering to the needs and aspirations of the privileged minority

Even with various national priorities that requires immediate attention, India still follows the old system of ranking that focus on the needs and aspirations of the minority. We in India follow a system that encourages international education at the cost of basic needs of the majority who live in misery, which is considered to be less profitable and less attractive. It is time to ask ourselves the purpose of such an education system that does no good to majority of the population in the country. Applying the same system of education is useless unless it does not take into account the regional variations and needs.

The ranking of the institutions should include the quality of the graduates, their location and their contribution to the society. Evaluating the institutions based on the inputs does not reflect their contribution to the society. Including social mission as a criterion will make the ranking more meaningful and will help in catering to the need of the majority population in India.

In the Indian context, there is an increased need for the educational institutions to look for new vision that will incorporate social commitment and so institutions will address local needs and provide education to students from the rural and backward backgrounds. The traditional approach of selection based on examination is not adequate to drive social change as it concentrates only on theoretical learning and cognitive assessment. Even if some of them acknowledge the superficial nature of the ranking system, most of them are sure that it is a technique employed to increase the sales and revenue of the magazine.