Kerala Marked History to become the First State to Establish its own Institutional Ranking Framework

Kerala has created a milestone by being the very first state to implement its rating system for higher education institutions. The Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) announced the Kerala Institutional Ranking Framework (KIRF) on May 3, 2023, modelled after the National Institute of Ranking Framework (NIRF).

The competing educational institutions will be ranked in the following categories: in general, colleges and universities, management, engineering, architecture, healthcare, the dental profession, pharmaceuticals, nursing, law, and teacher education, according to the Kerala Institutional Ranking Framework.

According to the official, the Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) will be the implementing agency, and the ranking exercise will take place annually. One of the reasons for establishing such a mechanism was to increase the excellence of higher education in the state and to reduce the flow of students travelling outside the state to pursue their educational goals.

The information will be published on a specially designed web page. Wherever essential and feasible, KSHEC will undertake verification of the information with the assistance of appropriately identified partner agencies. KSHEC will derive vital details from this data and compute multiple metrics using the software. The educational institutions would be ranked according to this information.

According to officials, the Kerala Institutional Ranking Framework was inspired by the National Institutional Ranking Framework, a technique used by the union government's Ministry of Education to assess institutions of higher learning across the nation as a whole. According to them, the higher education scene in Kerala was found to be positively equivalent to the overall national situation, and in certain respects, the scenario in the state had been more favorable than some of the rapidly maturing institutions of higher learning in southern states.

"Kerala envisages the formation of a state-level institutional ranking framework without altering the core qualities and components of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). It is inevitable to patronise the socio-cultural heritage and values that the state has sculpted throughout its democratic era," the official statement said. They also stated that the KIRF was created as a result of extensive discussion and collaborative addresses among professionals and interested parties in higher education from both inside and beyond the state of Kerala.

KIRF Criteria

The system will grade higher education institutions on five criteria: Teaching, Learning, and Resources (TLR), Knowledge Dissemination and Research Excellence (KDRE), Graduation Outcome (GO), and Outreach and Inclusivity (OI). NIRF follows these components as well. Universities and colleges will also be assessed according to state-specific criteria and indicators. The Kerala State Higher Education Council has established the ranking process, and rankings will be provided yearly.