T.N. to establish new ranking list for higher education institutes

The Tamil Nadu government has provided in-principle approval for establishing a State Institutional Ranking Framework (SIRF) — a ranking list for higher education institutions in the State.
According to a government order issued on Monday, the Tamil Nadu State Council for Higher Education (TANSCHE), which had in a letter to the government earlier this month proposed to develop indicators for performance assessment of higher education institutions, will be the implementing authority of the ranking.
The government has agreed to sanction ₹75 lakh for implementing the SIRF, and ₹10 lakh to meet preliminary expenses such as forming an expert committee, stakeholder consultation, and software development.
The ranking will seek to 'encapsulate holistic development of students in terms of skill acquisition, competency development, and professional readiness', besides ranking institutions on other metrics.
In the first phase of implementation, an expert committee would be formed for consultation with stakeholders across academia and industry to finalise indicators and evaluation metrics. These will be tested in 20 diverse institutions across disciplines. The indicators will then be refined based on feedback before the project is rolled out in full.
Such a move was necessitated as the current ranking frameworks, including the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), largely focused on indicators such as research output, faculty-student ratios and publication metrics. There was insufficient focus on student learning outcomes, overemphasis on number of publications and citations, heavy reliance on institutional self-reporting without verification, limited stakeholder engagement and absence of a level playing field, the order said.
A holistic outcome-based evaluation capturing aspects like problem solving, critical thinking, communication, teamwork and ethical reasoning would be a key feature of the SIRF. Institutional performance would be assessed through indicators such as internships, employability indices and alumni outcomes, besides seeking inputs from students, faculty, employers and alumni.
All submitted data will undergo verification and TANSCHE will provide open access to its evaluation criteria.
For this, the Council will set up a digital platform for data submission, analysis, visualisation and reporting, the order added.

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