How did Bihar’s universities fare in NIRF Rankings 2024: know the details
Patna University, one of the oldest universities in the country, which is accredited with a B+ grade by NAAC, has been placed in the 51-100 rank band in the category of state public universities.
State-run higher education institutions in Bihar have performed well in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) this year. Five prominent institutions — Patna University (PU), Patna Women’s College (PWC), Chanakya National Law University (CNLU), Bihar Agricultural University (BAU) and Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna (CIMP) — have performed notably across various categories.
This achievement is particularly noteworthy as it comes alongside the established presence of prestigious national institutions like IIT, NIT and IIM in the state. Thanks to the encouragement and motivation from the state govt, as many as 151 constituent colleges, 61 institutions and three conventional universities of the state applied for NIRF ranking in 2024. Consequently, some of these institutions occupied honourable places in the NIRF ranking.
This performance is quite significant because most of the institutions face an acute dearth of teachers and lack sufficient infrastructure of laboratories and libraries, say academics.
PU, one of the oldest universities in the country, which is accredited with a B+ grade by NAAC, has been placed in the 51-100 rank band in the category of state public universities. PWC, an autonomous college under PU and accredited with an A++ grade, figures in the 101-150 band in the category of colleges.
Established in 2006, CNLU applied for NIRF ranking for the first time this year and secured the 31st rank in the category of law. It is already accredited by NAAC with a ‘B’ grade. Similarly, the 10-year-old BAU secured the 36th rank in the category of agricultural sciences. CIMP has been placed in the 101-125 band in the category of management institutions.
Expressing his satisfaction with the university’s entry into the elite club of legal institutions, CNLU vice-chancellor (VC) Faizan Mustafa said that the university has scored highly on the graduation outcome and women diversity under the outreach and inclusivity parameter. “Graduation outcome is the most definite proof of educational standards of any educational institution,” he said.
He expressed the hope that in future rankings, CNLU would surely be rated among the top 10 institutions as the university has identified some areas of improvement such as quality publications, faculty recruitment and public perception of the university.
PU VC Ajay Kumar Singh to this newspaper that the university is striving hard to ensure its all-round development so that it could occupy a prominent place among the top 100 universities in the overall category of NIRF ranking and its accreditation with A+ grade by NAAC.
PU’s internal quality assurance cell director Birendra Prasad said the university’s NIRF ranking would help secure liberal grants from PM Usha fund for development and also facilitate the university in achieving better grades from NAAC.
Bihar State Higher Education Council (BSHEC)’s vice-chairman Kameshwar Jha said with the introduction of NAAC’s binary accreditation process more and more institutions of the state would now apply for NIRF ranking as the parameters of both NIRF and NAAC accreditation are almost identical. “Appointments against vacant posts of teachers are already being made by the university service panel and the state govt is also contemplating sanctioning liberal grants for augmenting research activities in the universities,” he said.
BSHEC’s academic advisor N K Agrawal lauded the performance of state-run institutions in the NIRF ranking and said that from next year onward these institutions would strive hard to achieve excellence and fare a decent grade in the NIRF ranking.
(Source: The Times of India)
