Our June 2006 cover

Eleven years ago, INDIA TODAY started a survey that has become, at the risk of being immodest, an institution. Our annual Survey of Academic Excellence has grown from a rating of India’s Top 10 Colleges to become a much more comprehensive survey of country’s best colleges across six academic streams in 12 cities.

This year’s INDIA TODAY-AC Nielsen Survey of Academic Excellence is bigger and, we hope, better. For starters, we have increased the number of colleges ranked, from the top 20 colleges to the top 50 in arts, science and commerce. In law, medicine and engineering, the colleges ranked have increased from 20 to 25. For the first time, the survey goes to Kochi and Jaipur, widening its spread across urban India.

The response to the survey has always been overwhelming and varied: from appreciative students and curious principals to enraged NRI alumni who have disagreed with our rankings. We take this survey very seriously and have tried to keep the evaluation process as stringent and as updated. The entire exercise takes three months. It begins with feedbacks from 900 experts, all of whom are at the level of deans, principals and heads of departments, starting with 360, whose opinions whittle down a list of 1,400 colleges to 600.

The next round goes to 540 more experts who rank the 600 colleges on seven parameters including curriculum, quality of academic input, student care and job placements. On the basis of this score, 270 colleges across six streams are selected and finally surveyors go to each of the ranked colleges for factual information like faculty-student ratio, placements and infrastructure.

A quarter of the experts consulted are rotated every year so that the inputs from the academic community remain fresh. We know the results do cause some heartburn but the rankings have set a quality standard in Indian academia that had never existed.

We live in the information age where knowledge is power. The most powerful tool we can equip our children with is a quality education. What India wants from its vast network of colleges is not to be ordinary institutions, but outstanding ones. If our survey has forced colleges to constantly re-examine their standards and the relevance of what they offer their students, its purpose is served.

Quality education is the need of the hour.

Index