Best Colleges of India

 

As colleges across the country gird up to take in another batch of students, an India Today- ORG- MARG poll identifies the centres of excellence.

It's that first step towards adulthood -- and it is bewildering in its complexity. Enter any college campus at this time of the year and confusion smacks you between the eyes: red, brick buildings that look alike, over-crowded corridors, harassed counsellors, a variety of multi-coloured forms to fill and cafeterias that smell of stale food. The college world seems to swirl in an indifferent haze.

Let's face it -- trying to get into any old college in India isn't a problem. After all, there are 232 universities with about 9,500 colleges to choose from. But in a world where competition begins from kindergarten, students scurry around looking for the best colleges because of the gnawing fear that an incorrect choice could ruin their future. Identifying India's best colleges in various fields, however, is a difficult process. Simply because there are no established, authentic system to rate them, and anyway trying to assess quality is as simple as particle physics. In the West, colleges try and stand out, emphasising their uniqueness, trying hard to sell themselves. But here, instead of being provided with concrete and calibrated facts, students have to rely on myth, rumour and half-truths. It makes admission a nightmarish experience.

Last year, India Today made the first landmark attempt to identify the centres of excellence by ranking the country's top 10 institutions of higher learning. We had then commissioned ORG-MARG to speak to 145 principals in 10 major cities and bring out a list that identified the top 10 colleges of the country irrespective of the various fields. It was easy to see that we hadn't gone wrong. All of them were exceptional colleges whose styles of functioning are imitated, ideas adopted and examples followed.

This year the process has been refined further. ORG-MARG broke up the entire process of assessment into two phases. The first was an exploratory phase where a selected bunch of principals/head of departments were asked to work out attributes on which to evaluate colleges, the relative importance of each attribute and a list of colleges which they felt were the best in India.

These were then analysed to shortlist the right set of attributes, to calculate importance of scores for these attributes and work out colleges of national stature. Instead of just limiting the poll to general/medical and engineering courses, like the one last year, the general category was broken into arts/science and commerce, and even included law as a category. Care was taken to include specialised attributes for various fields like "kind of patients the hospital attracts" in medicine and "provision of legal practical training" in law. Finally, in the second phase, the net was cast wide and 300 principals (twice last year's number) and heads of departments were polled on a detailed questionnaire to work out the best colleges of 1998.

Let's hope it goes far in helping you to choose, instead of just getting chosen.

THE METHODOLOGY
The India Today-ORG-MARG poll was held in 10 cities -- Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna, Ahmedabad and Pune. It was conducted over three days -- June 18, 19 and 22 -- among principals, vice-principals, deans and head of departments. The respondents contacted were 300. They were asked to evaluate each college on each attribute on a scale of 1 to 10. Overall ratings for each college were then calculated depending upon the average rating which the college got on each attribute and the importance of each attribute.

KEY CRITERIA
The principals, heads of department and senior professors were first asked to list the attributes which they felt were important for a student to consider before he or she chose a college. The respondents were then asked what they felt the relative importance of each attribute was. This was done by asking all of them to distribute 100 points across all the attributes they mentioned. An average was then worked out to get what is called "an importance score" for each attribute.