Top 500 Arts, Science & Commerce Colleges 2024-25

The annual EWIHER with its careful categorisation of higher education institutions — to eliminate apples and oranges type comparisons – is the most reliable guide for school-leavers seeking academically and aptitudinally suitable colleges and universities, writes Dilip Thakore As most corporate leaders will testify, academic standards India’s higher education institutions — especially undergrad arts, science and commerce colleges — are short of expectation. Year after year the country’s 45,473 colleges nonchalantly certify an estimated 10 million graduates as ready for employment in government, industry and business. The majority of them however, are far from job-ready and require extensive and expensive post-induction training before they become productive. According to State of Working India 2023 report of the Bengaluru-based Azim Premji University, 42 percent of India’s graduates under-25 were unemployed in 2021-22. And this is not because there are no vacancies in industry and business. Quite the contrary. Most captains of India Inc lament the unavailability of sufficiently well-qualified and skilled youth for managerial and shop-floor jobs. After analysing the job-readiness of 440,000 young graduates in 2,500 campuses across India, in its India Graduate Skills Index, Mercer/Mettl, a New York-based firm with several offices in India that bills itself as the “world’s fastest, largest online assessment and certification company”, reports that 55 percent of college graduates are “not employable”. Consequently choosing the ‘right’ — most academically and aptitudinally suitable — undergrad college is a matter of critical importance for higher secondary school-leavers. Therefore since 2013, your editors have been publishing the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings to make it easier for school-leavers to choose the most appropriate undergrad Arts, Science and Commerce colleges in India. Although media publications and several government agencies notably NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), a subsidiary of the University Grants Commission (UGC), awards its A-E star ratings to colleges and universities that opt for assessment, NAAC doesn’t — and never did — inspire much confidence. Even though it was established in 1994, thus far only 9,062 colleges and universities have volunteered for NAAC accreditation. Last year at this time, Bhushan Patwardhan, Chairman of NAAC, resigned in dramatic circumstances citing “malpractices,” “manipulation” and “questionable grades” awarded by NAAC to favoured higher education institutions. This, as we remarked on this page at the time, was hardly novel news for us because over the years NAAC had besmirched its reputation by awarding five star rating to numerous colleges and universities that didn’t deserve even three. The latest news reported by us last month (see https://www.educationworld.in/delhi-naacs-second-innings/) is that NAAC has scrapped its A-E ratings system in favour of a binary institutional evaluation system of accredited and non-accredited institutions. And within several categories it will award Level 1-5 ratings. Academics are keeping their fingers crossed that the new accreditation system won’t be same old wine in a new bottle. The other official HEI (higher education institutions) rankings initiative is the education ministry’s NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) introduced in 2015. Although it is often cited by some HEIs as proof of university…