June 14, 1999
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Top 10
Colleges As colleges across the country gird up to take in another batch of students. An INDIA TODAY-GALLUP MBA Poll identifies the centres of excellence. By Vijay Jung Thapa
This is the season of high anxiety and frantic trips. Across India, families of more than fifty lakh high-school students will spend time visiting old colonial red-brick structures called college campuses. There -- as the days dwindle down to a precious few before the last date -- these students and their families will struggle to identify the right college that will bestow upon them a pedigree ensuring success in life. It won't be easy. As students scurry around with a gnawing fear that an incorrect choice could ruin their future, the hustle and bustle of the admission process smacks them between the eyes. Overcrowded corridors, multi-coloured forms, harried counsellors, differing admission rules -- everything suddenly seems to swirl around in an indifferent haze. That's where we come in. After three years of compiling the country's only ranking system for colleges, we take pride in becoming an authority on ranking colleges. The trouble in India is that we are besieged with colleges that are mired in mediocrity. After all, there are almost 250 universities and about 10,000 colleges to choose from. But which are the ones that are centres of excellence -- and how do you go about establishing they are the best? Grading quality, one quickly learns, is about as easy as particle physics. A classic case of failure is the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, set up five years ago to grade quality. It worked out a variety of impressive criteria: goals and objectives, curriculum design, teacher assessment, financial resources, consultancies and extension activities and student feedback. Sadly, more than half the universities they sought to rank, did not even respond. In 1997, India Today made the first landmark attempt to identify the top 10 centres of excellence in India. By our standards today, that poll was simplistic: a total of 145 principals were polled to identify the best general multi-disciplinary colleges. The following year, we refined the process in two ways: we increased the respondents to 300 principals and heads of departments and instead of limiting the poll to general colleges added categories like arts, science, commerce, engineering, medical and law. This year, we've gone a step further. On the advice of the Bangalore-based Gallup MBA, we included students in the poll for the first time. The reasoning was simple: they are after all the "customers" in these institutions and who better than them to give us a good feel of what's happening inside. Besides, we cast our nets even wider: this year 1,000 people were polled (400 academicians and 600 students) through a detailed questionnaire to arrive at the best colleges of 1999. Their responses were then analysed to arrive at the colleges of national stature. After a top 10 ranking was established, a sub-set familiar with the working of these colleges was identified from among the respondents. The sub-set members were then asked to further rate the colleges on a five-point scale ranging from "excellent" to "very poor" on 16 specific aspects like reputation, curriculum, academics, facilities, student help and admissions procedure. What we also did was take into account some of the feedback that we got from our last two polls. Readers indicated that while there was a lot of cross-country travel for medical, engineering and even law colleges, by and large the students opting for arts, science and commerce preferred to study in their own cities. So be it. For more value addition this year -- in the categories of arts, science and commerce -- we are listing city-specific ranks from seven cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad. One way or another, look out for these colleges. THE TOPPERS
STATISTICAL DILEMMA One thousand respondents were asked to rank the colleges that they were aware of based on overall perceptions. This exercise was done separately for each category (arts, science, commerce, engineering, medical and law) and the results were used to shortlist the top 10 in each. The respondents were then divided into those who were just aware of these colleges and those who were familiar with these colleges. Respondents who were familiar were asked to rate the colleges they knew on a 5-point scale ranging from "excellent" to "very poor" on 16 important aspects relating to activities and administration of the college, the reasoning being that only those familiar with the colleges could rate them in an in-depth fashion. Once this was done, the aspects were analysed and then grouped into six themes: reputation, curriculum, academics, facilities, student help and admission procedure. These themes were then weighted in terms of importance and the colleges ranked on these aspects. So, while the overall ranking was done by all respondents, the ranking on specific issues was done by a sub-set of this group. Because of this, the overall rank of a college may not tally with its performance on each of the specific aspects. We want to emphasise that the overall ranking should not be matched with the rankings on specifics. The specific rankings were only given as value addition to render the decision-making easier for the admission seeker. |
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