To inspire, aid and enable class XII students to select the most suitable undergrad colleges, since 2018 EducationWorld has been rating India’s Top 500 Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering colleges on several critical parameters of education excellence and ranking them in separate categories, writes Dilip Thakore

Now that the novel Coronavi­rus pandemic which forced the longest disruption and closure of education institutions from pre-primaries to universities (March 2020-February 2022) in India, is over, and the world’s largest, na­tional population of children and youth is streaming back into campuses at the fag end of the academic year 2021-22, all that remains for online school-leavers is to write their class X and XII board exams. How well they perform in these vitally important exams will determine their junior college and undergrad education destinations.

According to all indications, after almost two years of online learning, all board exams will have to be written of­fline in designated examination centres this month (April). Even though syllabuses have been pruned, school-leavers have anxious times ahead. They have to score high marks in their chosen streams to ensure they enter the country’s best undergrad arts, science, commerce and engineering colleges.

Inevitably, in a nation which has foolishly under-invest­ed in education and human capital development, competi­tion for admission into the Top 500 of the country’s 45,000 undergrad colleges and 1,005 universities is intense. The total number of India’s higher secondary school-leavers per year is estimated at 12 million. Against this, the Top 500 can at best admit 500,000 top-scoring school-leavers from across the country. To aspire to enter the best colleges, top­pers need to know which are the country’s most-respected undergrad education institutions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Therefore to inspire, aid and enable class XII students to select and aim for most suitable undergrad colleges, since 2018 EducationWorld has been rat­ing India’s Top 500 Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering colleges on several critical parameters of edu­cation excellence and ranking them inter se. In addition for the past nine years, we have also been ranking the country’s Top 300 universities and 100 private B-schools. The prime ob­jective of this elaborate exercise which involves field interviews spread over three months with more than 4,000 informed sample respondents (fac­ulty and final year students) is to aid and assist top-ranked school-leavers to choose the most aptitudinally suit­able higher learning institutions for continuing their education.

Admittedly, several other publica­tions including India Today, some business magazines and dailies also publish league tables rating and rank­ing the country’s best higher education institutions. But we believe as an ex­clusively education-focused magazine of greater depth and experience of the education sector, EducationWorld is better qualified to provide context and analysis of our carefully curated league tables. Moreover, for ideologi­cal and accessibility reasons, unlike other publications, we rank public and private higher ed institutions (HEIs) separately. The rationale of this sepa­ration is that government HEIs pro­vide highly subsidised education and therefore, tend to be the first choice of school-leavers. However because the number of high quality (Central government) HEIs is very limited and they foolishly levy universal (instead of targeted) rock-bottom fees, their admission cut-off marks are sky-high and annual intake of students is very limited.

Therefore, the majority of school-leavers are obliged to choose between poor quality state government colleges and relatively high-fees private col­leges/universities, and tend to prefer the latter which are separate and dis­tinct. Hence we rank them in separate league tables. For the same reason in the EW league table of engineering colleges, the highly subsidised 22 Central government-promoted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and 31 NITs (National Institutes of Technol­ogy) which routinely dominate engi­neering league tables of other publica­tions year after year, and require steep cut-offs for entry, are eliminated from the EW league tables.

Similarly our B-school rankings eliminate the capital intensive Central government-promoted IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) which rou­tinely top all media rankings. Instead, we rate and rank private B-schools which are more accessible and afford­able. These carefully weighed consid­erations differentiate the annual Edu­cationWorld India Higher Education Rankings from the tediously deja vu HEI rankings of other media publica­tions.

Against this backdrop, we commis­sioned the well-reputed, Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000) to poll well-informed educators and senior students countrywide to rate India’s best Arts, Science and Com­merce colleges sub-divided into three categories — private autonomous, government autonomous and non-autonomous — on six benchmark parameters of higher education ex­cellence, viz, competence of faculty; faculty welfare and development; cur­riculum & pedagogy, including digital readiness; industry placements; in­frastructure and facilities, and lead­ership and governance quality. The scores awarded to the country’s most reputed 500 Arts, Science and Com­merce (ASC) colleges by sample re­spondents under the six parameters were totaled to rank India’s best ASC colleges. All parameters are accorded equal weightage, except the critically important parameter of competence of faculty, accorded double weightage of 200.

To constitute an ad­equate size sample respon­dents’ database, our field personnel interviewed 1,789 faculty and 2,278 final year students of Arts, Science and Commerce col­leges and requested them to award scores under all six parameters of excellence to institutions other than their own. The scores awarded by the respondents under each parameter to colleges were totaled to rank India’s best government autonomous, private autonomous and Top 100 non-auton­omous Arts, Science and Commerce colleges. Segregation of colleges into these categories is necessary to avoid apples and oranges type evaluation,” says Premchand Palety, the found­er-CEO of C fore. An experienced market research and opinion polls professional who began his career with ORG, India’s pioneer retail mar­ket research firm of the 1970s-2000, Palety, an alum of Punjab Engineer­ing College and Delhi’s FORE School of Management, went solo with the promotion of C fore in the millennium year. Since then, the company which has 20 corporate clients countrywide has acquired several decades of ex­perience of conducting field research and opinion polls. C fore’s clients in­clude Nestle, several political parties and Hindustan Times.

In the pages following, we present India’s Top 200 private autonomous, Top 100 government autonomous and Top 100 non-autonomous Arts, Science and Commerce colleges. We believe that these league tables will aid and enable parents and school-leavers to choose the most suitable liberal arts higher education institu­tions for further study.

 

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India’s Best Private Autonomous Colleges

A majority of the private autonomous Arts, Science and Commerce colleges are Christian minority institutions. In an era when Hindu majoritarianism is on the march, the huge contribution of Christian institutions to Indian education needs to be borne in mind

India’s higher education system is defined by bewildering classifica­tions. In undergraduate Arts, Sci­ence and Commerce (ASC) edu­cation, school-leavers have a choice between private autonomous, govern­ment autonomous and government/ private non-autonomous colleges.

In addition, a growing number of private liberal arts universities — Jindal Global, Ashoka, Amity, Flame among others which offer undergrad­uate education — have mushroomed across the country. School-leavers have to tread gingerly to select the most suitable undergrad institution to achieve their higher education goals and career aspirations.

Under s.12 and s.26 of the UGC Act, 1956, the commission is empow­ered to issue rules/guidelines to non-technical colleges/universities for the maintenance of standards. Moreover under the University Grants Com­mission (Conferment of Autonomous Status upon Colleges and Measures for Maintenance of Standards in Au­tonomous Colleges) Regulations, the commission is empowered to confer academic autonomy on high perfor­mance colleges. Autonomous status is highly prized by college managements because it confers several operational freedoms which are denied to non-autonomous colleges.

For one, unlike non-autonomous colleges which are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities, autonomous colleges are permitted to design their own syllabuses and cur­riculums, introduce new study pro­grammes, conduct examinations and have the freedom to prescribe rules for admission in consonance with the reservation policy of the state govern­ment/ national policy, and indepen­dently stipulate tuition fees. They can also constitute their own academic councils, board of studies and finance committees and shall have “complete administrative autonomy and the privilege of appointing their own ad­ministrative staff and teaching faculty including principal”.

Recommended: India’s top-ranked private autonomous colleges 2021-22

Moreover, although its degree is awarded by the affiliating university, the name of the autonomous college is inscribed on the degree certificate. Under s.3, UGC also has the power to confer autonomy upon high per­formance private ‘deemed-to-be uni­versities’ which are also fully autono­mous, except that they are prohibited from affiliating colleges, a privilege (irrationally) restricted to public uni­versities. In sum, within a higher edu­cation system in which universities af­filiate 300-700 colleges, autonomous colleges can differentiate themselves from the herd.

However, UGC prescribes stiff conditions for awarding colleges and universities autonomous status. Ap­plicant colleges must be of more than ten years’ standing and “accredited by either NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) with mini­mum ‘A’ Grade or by NBA (National Board of Accreditation of the All In­dia Council for Technical Education) for at least three programme(s) or be awarded autonomy by a correspond­ing accreditation grade/score from a UGC empanelled accreditation agency”. Unsurprisingly, only 871 out of the country’s 45,000 colleges have been awarded autonomous status by UGC (March 31, 2021).

But this complex, unwieldy higher education system has clearly outlived its purpose, whatever it was. On the recommendation of the K. Kasturi­rangan Committee (2018), the Na­tional Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposes dismantling of the colleges affiliating system and proposes the evolution of colleges into multi-disci­plinary degrees awarding universities in a phased manner.

Obviously, ASC colleges which have already been conferred autono­mous status will be the first to trans­form into degree-awarding universi­ties. And among government and private autonomous colleges, the lat­ter — some of them over a century old — are best prepared for autonomy. In this context it’s also pertinent to note that a substantial number — perhaps a majority of the country’s 227-strong league of private autonomous ASC colleges ranked by EducationWorld — are Christian minority institutions. In an era when Hindu majoritarianism espoused by the all-conquering BJP and its allied organisations is on the march, the huge contribution of Chris­tian minority schools and higher ed institutions to Indian education and towards nurturing the Indian middle class needs to be borne in mind.

Against this backdrop, it’s hardly a surprise that for the third year in succession St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (SXM, estb.1869) is voted India’s #1 private autonomous college by a comfortable margin, followed by St. Joseph’s College (Autono­mous), Bengaluru ranked second for the third year. Indeed, seven of the Top 10 undergrad colleges ranked in the EW 2022-23 league table of pri­vate autonomous colleges are vintage institutions promoted by the various orders of the church, and especially the Society of Jesus, aka Jesuits.

SXM’s dominance of the EW India league table of private autonomous colleges is complete. It is awarded the highest score under five of the six parameters — competence of fac­ulty, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy (including digital readiness), placements, and leadership and governance. Last year in a detailed interview, Dr. Rajen­dra Shinde, the affable principal of India’s most respected private auton­omous college, attributed SXM’s top ranking to its swift switch to online learning because of the high compe­tence of the college’s faculty in 2020- 21 when all education institutions were under lockdown for the entire year. Unsurprisingly, SXM has been awarded the highest rating under the parameters of competence of faculty and faculty welfare and development this year as well.

It’s a measure of the Jesuit contri­bution to Indian undergraduate edu­cation that St. Joseph’s College, Bengaluru (aka Bangalore), an­other vintage institution (estb.1882) is ranked second after St. Xavier’s, Mumbai for the third year in succes­sion. However, the response of the college principal Fr. (Dr.) Victor Lobo for the EWIHER 2022-23 proj­ect is less than enthusiastic. “We are very happy and glad that St. Joseph’s College (Autonomous) has retained its second position in India and 1st position in South India. St. Joseph’s College believes in the spirit of ‘Magis’ (sic). We believe we still have a long way to go and achieve many laurels,” says Dr. Lobo in a written reply to a detailed e-mail questionnaire from your editor.

On the subject of future plans of this highly ranked private autono­mous college, Lobo is more forth­coming, even if vague. “We already have (drawn up) our plan for the next ten years. We are building two new campuses and the biggest dream is to become St. Joseph’s University. The SJU Bill has been passed by the (Kar­nataka) government,” says Lobo.

In sharp contrast, Dr. Parag Ajg­aonkar, an alumnus of the University of Mumbai who assumed the office of principal of the Narsee Monjee Col­lege of Commerce and Econom­ics, Mumbai (NMCCE, estb.1964) in 2017, is highly appreciative of the annual EW India Higher Education Rankings which he describes as “ex­tremely scientific and comprehensive study of higher education institutes in India”. Perhaps that’s also because NMCCE has made a great leap forward in public esteem from #8 last year to #3 in India and #2 in Maharashtra in 2022-23. Moreover, its associated neighbouring Mithibai College — both these institutions are man­aged by the SVKM Trust (regst.1934) which manages over 40 education in­stitutions in six campuses across India — is ranked India #4 (#7 in 2021-22) together with the Bengaluru-based all-women Mt. Carmel College (estb.1948) which has retained its last year’s rank. The precipitous rise of NMCCE and Mithibai colleges in the EW league tables suggests that the Je­suit hegemony of private autonomous colleges is under threat.

Dr. Ajgaonkar attributes NMCCE’s great leap forward in public recog­nition to a combination of factors, particularly “significantly upgrad­ing the curriculum, introducing new study programmes and improving faculty skills through continuous fac­ulty development programmes”. Ac­cording to Ajgaonkar, the award of autonomous status has empowered NMCCE to introduce new honours programmes in commerce, statistics and Masters programmes in business analytics, and also introduce econom­ics and analytics as also short-dura­tion certificate programmes in a wide range of skilling subjects.

“Following the award of autono­mous status, we have been able to focus on applications-based experi­ential learning which has enabled our students to assimilate higher order thinking skills. We have also intro­duced soft skills training of over 100 hours to improve students’ employ­ability. Our autonomous status is to a great extent the cause of NMCCE’s upward mobility in the EW rankings,” says Ajgaonkar.

Following the Top 3, there is a reshuffle in the seating order at the Top 10 table. While the all-women Mount Carmel College, Benga­luru has retained its last year’s #4 rank, it has to share this position with Mithibai College, Mumbai which has been given a huge promotion this year to #4 (#7 in 2021-22). Ditto an­other Mumbai-based college — R.A. Poddar College of Commerce & Economics — which has zoomed to #6 (9).

On the other hand, Loyola, Chen­nai at #5, Rajagiri College of So­cial Sciences, Kochi #7, and Ma­dras Christian College, Chennai #8 have yielded rank this year. St. Ann’s College for Women #9 nationally and #1 in Telangana, and B.K. Birla College of Arts, Sci­ence and Commerce, and Nag­indas Khandwala College, both in Mumbai jointly ranked #10 have improved their rankings in 2022-23.

Dr. Veena Sanekar, ‘in-charge’ (pro tem) principal of the K.J. So­maiya College of Arts and Com­merce, Mumbai (KJSC, estb. 1960), believes the promotion of the institu­tion from #21 in 2019-20 to #19 last year and #7 in 2022-23 is a “moment to cherish” for KJSC. “Our steady im­provement in the EW rankings to the Top 10 in India and Top 3 in Maha­rashtra over the past three years is validation that the measures we have taken for improving teaching-learn­ing standards during the pandemic lockdown have been very effective. I believe that connectivism and con­structivism is the key to our success. The high rank awarded to us by your knowledgeable sample respondents is special because in spite of the unprec­edented adversities and challenges of the pandemic, we have maintained academic continuity and have contrib­uted to developing the intellectual ca­pabilities of the nation,” says Sanekar, an alumna of KJSC who signed up as faculty in 1991, and was appointed pro tem principal of the college in 2019.

Beyond the Top 10 table, private autonomous colleges that have im­proved their ranking this year are H.R. College of Commerce and Economics, Mumbai at #14 (19), the previously unranked Sri GCSR College, Rajam, Andhra Pradesh debuting at #17, Mar Athanasius College Kothamangalam, Kerala #17 (21), Fergusson College, Pune #21 (37), Kristu Jayanti College, Bengaluru #23 (27), SIES College of Arts, Science & Commerce, Mumbai #26 (39) and Jyoti Nivas College, Bengaluru #28 (39).

It’s also pertinent to note that while some colleges may be modestly ranked nationally, they are highly ranked in their states, most of which are larger and more populous than Europe­an countries. For instance, Ewing Christian College, Prayagraj (aka Allahabad) ranked #34 nationally is the #1 private autonomous college of Uttar Pradesh (pop.215 million), Khalsa College, Amritsar #46 in India is Punjab #1 and St. Xavier’s College of Education, Patna #63 in India is Bihar #1. Mind you these are not inferior institutions. These and numerous others with modest national, but high state rankings have been conferred autonomous status af­ter careful vetting by NAAC and UGC.

Also Read: India’s top-ranked private autonomous colleges 2021-22