The Education Ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework has come a long way since its inception a decade ago and is offering a credible alternative to rankings by foreign private agencies, said BITS Pilani Group Vice Chancellor V Ramgopal Rao. He, however, believes the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking system still faces some challenges that need to be addressed.

New Delhi: The Education Ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework has come a long way since its inception a decade ago and is offering a credible alternative to rankings by foreign private agencies, said BITS Pilani Group Vice Chancellor V Ramgopal Rao.

He, however, believes the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking system still faces some challenges that need to be addressed.

BITS Pilani Group Vice Chancellor V Ramgopal Rao's Statement

"The big win is that NIRF is announced by the Government of India. It has that official sanctity. QS or Times Higher Education rankings are private agencies and keep the perception part so high because that is their business model, and you can hire them for those services," Rao said.

"NIRF has come a long way in the last 10 years in terms of how it has evolved and how they have been able to strengthen some of these metrics. Having said that, there are still a lot of challenges," he told PTI in an interview.

The BITS Pilani Group vice chancellor said he feels that with over 14,000 individual institutions participating in NIRF and being ranked by the Government of India, which is used for funding and other things, NIRF needs much more strengthening.

The 10th edition of NIRF was announced on September 4.

Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, entered the top 10 universities ranking for the first time, bagging the seventh spot. The institution has also improved its overall ranking from 26 to 23, and the ranking among engineering institutions has seen a big jump from 20th spot to 11th this year.

BITS is also ranked second among pharmacy institutions.

Rao, who was earlier the director of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)-Delhi, suggested that the metrics to evaluate research need certain changes to be able to accurately rate the institutions.

"The first thing is about the research... if you look at the research parameters, almost 21 per cent of the rankings are for the research, whether it is the number of papers or the citations.

"I saw very interesting trends recently in a scientific paper... the number of papers and citations, track one on one, meaning if you plot on one axis the number of papers and citations on the other axis, it's a straight line," he said.

Elaborating, Rao said it essentially means that those who are writing more papers are essentially citing themselves.

"Either their institutions are citing it or they are citing it themselves. There are a lot of self-checking problems which is happening because of that. And when a metric is tracking one-on-one, the citations, the volume of research, counting it twice, one for one day of publications....I think it is leading to a double-counting event," he said.

Rao also called for audits if an institution shows a significant jump, as the ranking relies on self-reported data.

A lot of audits are needed. We need to ensure that randomly we audit the institutions which are showing significant improvements...that volatility is actually a big challenge in NIRF. Other than the top 20, there is a huge volatility across the remaining banks.

"If somebody has shown a significant jump, there has to be some data auditing at regular intervals. That will set a fear... The self-reported data, I believe, is a big concern because sometimes the results that come out of it are unexpected and do not reflect the reality on the ground," he added.

The participation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the NIRF rankings has grown from 3,565 in 2016 to 14,163 in 2025. Concurrently, the number of categories and subject domains has expanded from four in 2016 to 17 in 2025.

The 10th edition of the rankings evaluated institutions of higher education in nine categories -- overall, universities, colleges, research institutions, innovation, open universities, state public universities, skill universities and sustainable development goals (SDGs).

HEIs have also been ranked in eight subject domains -- engineering, management, pharmacy, law, medical, architecture and planning, dental, and agriculture and allied Sectors.

A record number of 7,692 unique institutions responded and submitted 14,163 applications across various categories and subject domains, offering themselves for ranking in 'Overall', category-specific, or domain-specific rankings.

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