From 16th in 2017 to 4th in 2021: CU climbs NIRF ranking ladder

From 16th in 2017 to 4th in 2021: CU climbs NIRF ranking ladder

Zeeshan.Jawed@timesgroup.com

Kolkata:11.09.2021

From being nowhere near the Top10 five years ago to ranking fourth on the National Institution Ranking Framework this year, Calcutta University has steadily climbed up the ladder by improving in several key areas, including teacher-student ratio, experienced faculty, student strength, regional diversity and quality of publications. The university, which was founded in January 1857, has also gained several points with respect to peer perception in the past five years, scoring almost 20 points.

With its improved performance in some of the key areas, CU figured just after IISc, JNU and BHU on the list, bypassing Jadavpur University, which ranked eighth, three rungs down from last year’s fifth position. “The ranking of the university at number four in the country and number one in the state is indicative of the collective zeal of our teachers, researchers, students and all other staff,” said CU vice-chancellor Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee. The NIRF rankings were published on Thursday.

In 2017, CU ranked 16th, in 2018,14th, in 2019, it ranked fifth and in 2020, it slid down to the seventh position. In 2018, the university fared badly in the faculty-student ratio category, scoring 15 out of 30. In 2021, the score under this head was 24.21 out of 30. In 2020, the university scored13.57 out of 20 in faculty with experience, but this time, the figure is 16.02 this year. The university’s peer perception score is also up from 37.39 out of 100 in 2019 to 45.77. But in 2020, the peer perception was 47.99. “The university created capital assets, excluding land and building worth Rs 26 crore. The amount spent on library and procuring new equipment for labs was over Rs 74 crore,” said an official.

At 45.77, CU lagged behind JU in peer perception score by almost 21 points, but it beat JU by almost 10 points in facultystudent ratio, four points in faculty with PhD and experience, 4.5 points in intellectual property and patents, 10 points in women diversity and 1.5 in region diversity. “Jadavpur University has faced a few issues in receiving grants over the past few years and that has impeded a lot of development. This reflected in the NIRF ranking this year,” said an official at Jadavpur University.

Five colleges from the state also figured on NIRF Top 100. Of them, only one—Bethune College—is a government institute. St Xavier’s College, with a total score of 67.41, ranked fourth, Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira (67.26) ranked fifth, Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Rahara (64.45) ranked 15th, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (62.50) ranked 21st and Bethune College

(52.23) ranked 77th. Bethune principal Krishna Roy said, “It is a matter of great pride that we are the only government college to be among the country’s Top 100. We are proud that we have been able to maintain the standard despite many adversities during pandemic.”

(Inputs by Poulami Roy Banerjee)