UGC Chairman lauds rankings of universities, says it helps to promote quality education

University Grant Commission (UGC) Chairman Professor DP Singh on Thursday, June 11 said that rankings of educational institutes help in promoting quality education, adding that it also gives an opportunity to institutions to introspect. Singh's comments come at the back of the Central government's rankings of Universities of the current year.

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'Helps in quality education'

Speaking to ANI, Singh said, "India Rankings have been announced itself by the HRD Minister. Rankings play an important role in the promotion of quality education. It provides an opportunity to the institutions to introspect the quality innovation, research and other parameters."

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry's National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) announced the rankings which placed IISC Bengaluru as the number one university in the country, along with Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) -- IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Kanpur, IIT Guwahati and IIT Roorkee -- among the top 10 universities in the country.

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Jamia Vice-Chancellor Professor Najma Akhtar said, "The achievement is all the more significant because of the challenging times the university has faced recently and also in the light of increased competition in the ranking." She said the achievement was possible because of the relevant and focussed research of highest quality and teaching by the dedicated and devoted faculty members.

On the other hand, JNU VC M Jagadesh Kumar said, "Again JNU is number one among central universities in NIRF 2020 rankings and is next only to IISc. We consistently maintained this rank during the last four years -- since 2017 to 2020. Credit goes to all the faculty, staff and students who worked hard to achieve this. We are proud of them and JNU will continue to support them in every possible manner. We will not let obstacles prevent us in our journey towards achieving excellence and contribute to the progress of our country."

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Talking about the plan to reopen universities after the threat of the virus decreases, UGC's Singh said, "After this lockdown, we are planning that social distancing must be ensured in education institutions after they re-open. We have thought of two things - one is related to increasing online content up to 40 percent. It means all higher education institutions in large numbers can adopt up to 40 percent online," the UGC chairman said. "It means at a given point of time a large number of students have their teaching, learning through online management and remaining can come to colleges and universities," he said.

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(Image credits: ugc.ac.in)