Current Science

Pranab Mukhopadhyay ¹, Murari P. Tapaswi ¹, P. K. Sudarsan ², Kavya Sudarsan ³

Affiliations
1 Internal Quality Assurance Cell, Department of Economics, Goa University, Taleigao Plateau, Goa 403 206, IN
2 Department of Economics, Goa University, Taleigao Plateau, Goa 403 206, IN
3 Department of Economics, Mumbai University, M.G. Road Fort, Mumbai 400 032, IN

Abstract

Various stakeholders use the ranking of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as a measure of quality. This is evident from numerous ranking efforts – both of the government (National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), the National Academic Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the National Board of Accreditation (NBA)) and the private sector. Developing countries like India should assess the academic quality by working with parameters that are globally acceptable, transparent to all stakeholders and not amenable to the control of lobby groups. One such parameter is publications in reputed international journals indexed by databases like Scopus and Web of Science is also considered by the NIRF. However, in contrary to the NIRF method, we propose that instead of considering the total publications the computations should be based on the publication rate (number of publications per teacher) to control the faculty size bias. Besides using the NIRF 2017 data, we observed that higher density of Ph D students increases both the number and the quality of publications and HEIs that invest more, tends to have a higher publication rate. Therefore, we conclude that the Indian HEIs should increase the number of Ph D students and access better funding in order to improve their global presence.

Keywords

National Institutional Ranking Framework, Publication Rate, Ranking HEIs, Scopus.

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P. Mukhopadhyay ¹, Murari P. Tapaswi ², P. K. Sudarsan ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Economics, Goa University, Goa - 403206, IN
2 Internal Quality Assurance Cell, Goa University, Goa - 403206, IN

Abstract

There is a belief that ‘the only safe and better way to improve quality of higher education in India is to delink most of the colleges from affiliating structure. Colleges with academic and operational freedom are doing better and have more credibility’¹. In order to attain autonomy, colleges are expected to have ‘Academic/ extension/research achievements of the faculty’, as one of the stated objectives to grant autonomy is to ‘Promote research in relevant fields’¹.

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Pranab Mukhopadhyay ¹, P. K. Sudarsan ¹, M. P. Tapaswi ²

Affiliations
1 Department of Economics, Internal Quality Assurance Cell, Goa University, Goa 403 206, IN
2 Internal Quality Assurance Cell, Goa University, Goa 403 206, IN

Abstract

The notion of optimality pervades most domains of decision-making¹, including human development², resource allocation and optimality in human capital formation^3,4. Some studies have estimated optimal school size with the view to enhancing student learning outcomes⁵. There have also been studies on the optimal amount of financial aid that is offered to students⁶. The notion of optimality should also pervade the higher education sector, as it places demands on scarce public funds and therefore needs rational rules for allocation.

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