IIT Madras best, again

IISC leads in universities and IIMA in B-schools

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras retained its top spot as India's best institute in the Ministry of Education’s National Institutional Rankings Framework (NIRF) 2021.

Ranked No. 1 in both the “overall” and “engineering” categories, IIT Madras — one of the Institutes of Eminence — now holds the top position for the third consecutive year. In the “Universities” and “Management” categories, Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bengaluru, and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad, respectively, continued to hold the top spot for the third consecutive year.

In the overall category, IISC Bengaluru, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi and IIT Kanpur bagged second, third, fourth and fifth ranks, respectively, with the top four retaining last year’s ranking. Among universities, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Banaras Hindu University, Calcutta University and Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham came in second, third, fourth and fifth, respectively.

IIT Madras Director Bhaskar Ramamurthi said the institute continued to excel in teaching, research and innovation, and has launched several new initiatives to implement the National Education Policy (NEP). With the Institute of Eminence funding, IIT Madras is now creating Centres of Excellence to encourage inter-disciplinary research that can lead to path-breaking discoveries and innovations, he added.

Among engineering institutes, after IIT Madras came IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Kanpur and IIT Kharagpur, in that order, all retaining their respective spots as last year. Among B-schools, IIM Bangalore and IIM Calcutta retained their second and third spot, while IIM Kozhikode improved its rankings to fourth, followed by IIT Delhi, which came up from rank nine.

And it was women’s colleges — Delhi’s Miranda House and Lady Shri Ram College — that retained their first and second ranks in the category. Chennai’s Loyola College, Kolkata’s St Xavier's College and Howrah’s Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira moved up to third, fourth and fifth position, respectively.

NIRF rankings have nine categories: overall, university, engineering, management, colleges, medical, pharmacy, architecture and law, and dental colleges. In all, 4,030 institutions — up from 2,426 in 2016 — offered themselves for ranking. That’s an increase of 1,604 or 66 per cent.