No Bihar education institution in top 100 of NIRF

PATNA: Not a single state-run higher education institution from Bihar figured among the top 100 in the overall ranking across the country, as per the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) under the Union ministry of education this year.
That is more worrisome because the state government claims to have made the largest allocation of its annual budget to education department. There are more than two dozen universities and 260 constituent colleges under the administrative control of the state having a population of about 13 crore, but not a single institution is able to compete at the national level.
About a dozen institutions from the state, including L N Mithila University, Chanakya National Law University, Chandragupt Institute of Management Patna, Patna Women’s College, St Xavier’s College of Education, A N College, College of Commerce, Arts and Science, Patna, C M College, Darbhanga, Jagjiwan College, Ara and R D and DJ College, Munger had applied for their ranking, but none of them could make it to the top 100. Strangely, the 105-year-old Patna University (PU) has not applied for NIRF ranking ever since it was introduced in 2016. It was accredited with B+ grade by NAAC in 2019. “The university is contemplating to apply for its NIRF ranking this year,” said PU’s internal quality assurance cell (IQAC) director Birendra Prasad. Bihar State Higher Education Council’s vice-chairman Kameshwar Jha admitted that lack of quality education owing to the unavailability of sufficient teachers and irregular academic sessions have been hampering the qualitative growth of higher education in the state.
“How can one expect an institution to perform well with the support of ad hoc teachers and guest faculties working against sanctioned posts in most universities and colleges of the state,” he said.
Former principal of Patna College, Nawal Kishore Choudhary, said the higher education institutions in the state suffer from acute shortage of teachers and infrastructural facilities. All the sanctioned posts of professors and associate professors in different universities have been lying vacant for the last four decades and teaching is managed by guest faculties appointed on an ad hoc basis. The libraries and laboratories of colleges and postgraduate departments do not have the basic equipment, plaguing research work. Under such a situation, it is impossible for any institution to achieve excellence and occupy a place even in the top 200, he said.
State education minister Vijay Kumar Choudhary said the decimal performance of state institutions in NIRF does not sound good and the education department has girded up its loin to improve the overall performance of universities and colleges. Steps have already been initiated by the government to provide all the modern physical infrastructural facilities to the institutions for creating a sound academic atmosphere, he said.
The minister said the process of appointment of teachers against the vacant posts in universities and colleges is already going on and about 4500 new teachers would be appointed by the end of the current year.
Universities and colleges are now being motivated to raise the quality of teaching and research and get themselves accredited by NAAC to take advantage of various government grants, he added.