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The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras has been graded as the top most institute for engineering, the Indian Institute of Science at Bangalore as the best university, the Indian Institute of Management â again at Bangalore â ranked as the leader in management studies and the Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Sciences as the leading institute for pharma studies by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) announced by the government. The National Institutional Ranking Framework, created by the Ministry of Human Resources Development in 2015,àoutlines a methodology to rank institutions across the country. The parameters used for ranking broadly cover âÂÂTeaching, Learning and Resources,â âÂÂResearch and Professional Practices,â âÂÂGraduation Outcomes,â âÂÂOutreach and Inclusivity,â and âÂÂPerceptionâ under 22 parameters.

Interestingly, the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi has been ranked as the third best and the Hyderabad University as the fourth best universities respectively. While the JNU was lately in the news for anti-India sloganeering which resulted in a filing of sedition case against the JNU Students Union president Kanhaiya Kumar, the Hyderbad University also saw trouble following the suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. The Institute of Chemical Technology at Mumbai is the second best publicly-funded University in country scoring 87.58 points as against the IISc which has scored 91.85 points.âÂÂThe top rank is a reflection of the commitment of the faculty, staff and students of IIT Madras towards fulfilling the objectives of the Strategic Plan 2020 that we have set for ourselvesâÂÂ, said Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT Madras soon after the rankings were announced by the Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani.

The IIT Madras Strategic Plan spells out quantified targets for all key pillars of the Institute. These include a flexible curriculum suited to the aspirations of todayâÂÂs youth, high quality faculty, a thriving research programme with a critical mass of research scholars and laboratories with the latest equipment, IndiaâÂÂs strongest industry-academia collaboration epitomized by the countryâÂÂs first university-based Research Park, an effervescent start-up ecosystem with nearly a hundred companies being currently incubated, a rapidly expanding programme of collaborations and student exchanges with leading global universities, and an enviable Placement record. In addition, the Institute prides itself in its outreach to the community at large. The Institute takes up a large number of projects and activities in the country where it brings to bear its core strengths in order to address various technical challenges. It has developed key technologies to address grand challenges faced by the country in water, energy, healthcare, housing, and the like. The InstituteâÂÂs alumni play an active role in helping the Institute grow, as well as in its outreach to the community. Alumni and well-wishers are making record contributions to the Institute to help it retain its position as a top educational and research institution and enhance its global standing.

The top five slots in engineering studies have been grabbed by the Indian Institutes of Technology with IIT-Madras being followed closely by IIT-Bombay, IIT-Kharagpur , IIT-Delhi and IIT-Kanpur. Among the newly IITs or the Rising Star category, IIT-Rooorkee stands sixth in the list of 25 best engineering colleges. Among the business schools, IIM Bangalore is followed by IIMs at Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Lucknow and Udaipur. The business school at Udaipur was started in 2010 and has done extremely well for itself by scoring 84.23 points. In the pharmacy studies, Manipal College of Pharmaceutical Studies is followed by University Institute of Pharmaceutical Studies at Chandigarh, Jamia Hamdard in New Delhi, Poona College of Pharmacy in Pune and Institute of Pharmacy, Nirma University at Ahmedabad. Participation in the ranking was purely voluntary and those institutions with an intake of less than 200 students and involved only in teaching without an research were not considered.”