JK Higher Education Deptt to rank colleges based on performance, excellence

Jammu, Aug 31: The J&K Higher Education Department is all set to launch a comprehensive ranking system for the colleges of Jammu & Kashmir. This was announced at a meeting held at the Civil Secretariat Jammu here Wednesday. The meeting was chaired by Principal Secretary Higher Education Department, Rohit Kansal.
Elaborating on the idea, the Principal Secretary informed that the Higher Education Department had decided to carry out a ranking of all Higher Educational Institutions in J&K based on asset of transparent criterion and a unique index. The IIT Jammu would the knowledge partner of the Higher Education Department and would design the unique index as well as a special portal to collect the information and rank the colleges. For this purpose an MoU would be signed between the Directorate of Colleges J&K and the IIT Jammu.
The two autonomous colleges of J&K viz. GDC Baramulla and GCW Parade would assist the Directorates of Higher Education in this exercise. A core team consisting members from Govt College Parade, GDC Baramulla and Director Colleges would help in the creation of indices and primary data would be provided by the department to the IIT team for formulation of ranking indices. The IIT team would be responsible for creating an index of colleges based on the department’s suggestions, creation of an online portal/ dashboard and processing of raw data to prepare the final college rankings.
Director IIT Jammu, Dr Manoj Singh Gaur was also present at the meeting along with his team of experts expressed happiness at the opportunity of carrying out such an exercise which would be among the first such initiatives in the country. He elaborated that the performance of the college in a diverse range of activities including academics, sports activities, research, placement, innovation, diversity, quality would be used to develop an index which in turn would be used to rank the colleges. It was told that an ‘internal system’ already exists which broadly ranks colleges as; outstanding, good, very good, average and poor. Additionally, the colleges are also subject to rankings under NIRF, NAAC and other rating agencies which categorise the colleges based on different parameters.
The Higher Education Department has already declared 2022 as the year of Excellence and the Principals of all the colleges have been given broad guidelines for achieving excellence under five broad segments: Achievements under Academic Excellence, Enhancing Skills and Employability, Research and Innovation, My College My Pride, Rewarding Efforts and Achievement. The Principal Secretary also noted that the feedback system launched by the department is already operational and is providing the students an opportunity to provide feedback about the quality of learning experience. Similarly, the teachers have also been facilitated by the system to provide inputs on the infrastructure and other administrative aspects of their respective colleges.
The Principal Secretary expressed the hope that the proposed College Ranking System would encourage the Higher Educational Institutions to strive for excellence and would also enable the department to spot and incentivize the leaders and handhold those who needed assistance.
Those present at the meeting included Special Secretary, Rakesh Badyal; Director Colleges, Dr Yasmeen Ashai; Principal GCW Parade, Dr SP Saraswat; Principal GDC Baramulla, Dr Mohammad Farooq Rather and Dr Sourabh.