Since 2016, the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) has been publishing annual rankings of higher education institutions (HEIs) in India, which was earlier done by private entities. The framework, inspired in principle by China’s Shanghai Rankings, was created to address the disadvantages faced by Indian institutions in global rankings by developing a set of parameters considered more relevant to the Indian context. Lately, this has also been driving Indian parents and their children’s decisions to join colleges and universities. Across India, though, several universities and institutes have been flagged by the media and whistleblowers for inflating or misreporting figures to climb the NIRF ladder.
At present, NIRF publishes rankings across multiple categories, including Overall, Research Institutions, Universities, and Colleges, along with discipline-specific lists such as Engineering, Management, Law, and others. The assessment is based on multiple parameters organised into five broad categories: Teaching, Learning and Resources; Research and Professional Practice; Graduation Outcomes; Outreach and Inclusivity; and Perception. Each parameter carries a specific weightage for the overall and discipline-specific rankings.
Academic communities have, however, raised concerns about the construction of these indicators, the transparency of the methods used, and the framework as a whole. Much of the criticism also focuses on the data collection process, since NIRF relies on applicants themselves, such as universities, colleges, and others, for the submission of information used in rankings.
Academics argue that this allows scope for data manipulation to climb the rankings ladder, and there is little to no credible verification or investigation into the submissions. NIRF, however, says that all data from ranked institutions undergoes rigorous verification. “The NIRF Team uses triangulation methods to detect and correct data issues in consultation with the concerned institutions,” it noted in the India Rankings 2024 report.
The 2025 rankings are yet to be released, but an analysis of the submissions of the data to the NIRF, along with the university’s data, offers a picture of the data discrepancies.
The story of Andhra University
For instance, consider Andhra University, one of the oldest public institutions located in the coastal city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, entering its centenary year. As per the NIRF rankings, Andhra University improved its overall category from 69 in 2017 to 41 in 2024. In the universities category, it moved up from 43 in 2017 to 25 in 2024 at the national level. The data available on the University’s website and gathered through RTI response paint a different picture about faculty strength when compared to the data submitted to NIRF.
Data shows the number of sanctioned posts at the University has been declining over the years. As per the university’s 2021 annual report, available on its website, there were 936 sanctioned posts for professors, associate professors, and assistant professors. The 2022 annual report shows 750 sanctioned teaching posts, and a Right to Information (RTI) response, of June 2025, shows 718 sanctioned teaching positions in the university.
Although the number of sanctioned posts decreased, the number of vacancies over the years has remained high. In 2021, of the 936 sanctioned posts, 72% remained vacant. The university had filled 262 posts by full-time faculty and 111 by contractual staff, leaving 674 posts vacant.
While the number of vacancies dipped to 28% in 2022, by 2025 it again saw a rise with 59%. The 2022 annual report showed 538 out of 750 positions filled, with 212 remaining vacant. Of the 538 filled positions, around 50% were full-time faculty and another 50% contractual.
The RTI response 2025 shows the composition of 718 sanctioned teaching positions in the university: 414 assistant professors, 196 associate professors, and 108 professors. Only 192 posts are filled regularly with 115 assistant professors, 54 associate professors, and 23 professors. Another 99 are on contract.
A closer look at the RTI reveals that as on June 2025 at least 20 courses across colleges of Arts, Science, Engineering, Law, and Technology have no full-time faculty and are managed by contract faculty. This means the university is running with about one-third of its sanctioned staff in regular positions, covering another almost 14% through contracts, and leaving some 60% of the posts vacant.
The data submitted by the university to the NIRF, however, shows 687 faculty members in 2022, compared to 373 in the 2021 annual report. For the NIRF submission of 2022, the faculty strength of 2021 is considered. The university reported 702 faculty members consecutively for three years from 2023 to 2025. The annual report, however, shows 538 in 2022, and 291 as per RTI data as of 2025.
While the 2022 figures were over 30% higher than those in the annual report, the 2025 figures were 140% higher than the numbers obtained through the RTI—more than double in comparison. It is important to note that, under the NIRF methodology framework, faculty data is taken from the previous year and is sourced directly from the applicant institutions in the prescribed format.
Students, current staff, and former professors told The Hindu that the NIRF 2025 data lists some retired professors who joined in the 1980s or 1990s as serving faculty, both regular and contractual. The 2025 NIRF data includes faculty names, dates of joining, designations, and work status. The Hindu verified these claims and confirmed at least two such cases where the faculty had retired.
Meanwhile, the university’s expenditure on salaries for teaching and non-teaching staff has steadily increased over the past three years. It stood at ₹462.08 crore in 2022, rose to ₹477.35 crore in 2023, and then jumped sharply to ₹608.24 crore in 2024. It shows an almost 32% increase between 2022 t0 2024.
One professor, who had served on deployment at the University for a couple of years and left recently, shared on the condition of anonymity: “The shortage of faculty members has always been a reality. In light of this shortage, we were deployed, but after a year and a half, we were asked to leave. We even pleaded to be retained, but were forced to move to other colleges. Our positions at the university remain vacant.”
D. Kusumanjali, a third-year B.Sc. Food Science and Technology student and SFI President for Andhra University, pointed to issues ranging from irregular disbursement of fee reimbursements, non-functional women’s hostels, syllabus incompletion, and pressure to complete courses and secure jobs, to the inability to even share the struggles back home. “This is beyond words,” she said.
The case of IIM Mumbai
Meanwhile, for the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Mumbai, a whistleblower exposed data manipulation related to income, expenditure, and faculty numbers, which eventually helped the institute jump from 27th place in 2019 to 6th among management institutes nationwide in 2024. It is to be noted that IIM Mumbai, erstwhile known as the National Institute for Training in Industrial Engineering (NITIE), was established by the Government of India in 1963, and its name changed in 2023 with an amendment to the Indian Institutes of Management Act.
A closer look at the records shows repeated discrepancies. The 2020 annual report listed only 60 teaching staff, including professors, associate professors, assistant professors, contract and adjunct faculty, along with the director. In contrast, the 2021 NIRF submission reported 100.
The pattern continued year after year—72 reported in the 2022 NIRF submission against 60 in the 2021 annual report, 75 in the 2023 NIRF submission against 51 in the 2022 report, 76 in the 2024 NIRF submission against 58 in the 2023 report, and 75 in the 2025 NIRF submission against 59 in the 2024 annual report.
The Hindu sent queries by email to both universities regarding this. In an email dated August 23, the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University, Prof. G. P. Raja Sekhar replied: “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention. We will look into the discrepancies you have highlighted and get back to you with a detailed response.”
One-sixth of the overall score directly depends on faculty
Across the five parameters in the Overall Category and their sub-parameters as per the 2024 methodology framework, faculty strength plays a crucial role in the NIRF framework. To sum up, roughly one-sixth of the overall score depends directly on faculty, but if you include other metrics that use faculty strength as the base, nearly one-third of the score hinges on it.
Under the Teaching, Learning & Resources (TLR) parameter, faculty are counted twice: once under the Faculty–Student Ratio with emphasis on permanent faculty (FSR), and again under the Combined Metric for Faculty with Ph.D. and Experience (FQE). TLR carries a weightage of 0.30 and has six sub-parameters. FSR is allotted 25 marks and FQE 20 marks, together making 45 marks within TLR.
In FSR, full-time regular faculty in the institution during the previous year are counted. A regular appointment means faculty on a full-time basis. Contract or ad-hoc faculty are included only if they taught in both semesters of the previous academic year. Faculty members with Ph.D. and Master’s degrees are counted, while those with only a Bachelor’s degree are not.
In FQE, the percentage of faculty with Ph.D. (or equivalent qualification) is calculated with respect to the total number of faculty required or the actual number of faculty, whichever is higher, in the previous year. Further, in the Outreach and Inclusivity (OI) parameter, which carries a weightage of 0.10 (100 marks), Women Diversity (WD) accounts for 30 marks, and considers both women students and faculty. In WD, along with female students, the percentage of women faculty is considered, including those in senior and administrative positions such as Heads of Departments, Deans, or Institute Directors.
Further, in the Research and Professional Practice (RP) parameter, which carries a weightage of 0.30 (100 marks), faculty is considered again the base for several metrics. These include the Combined Metric for Publications (PU – 30 marks), the Combined Metric for Quality of Publications (QP – 30 marks), and the Combined Metric for Publications and Citations in SDGs (PSDGs – 10 marks). For these, the faculty count is taken as the maximum of either the nominal number of faculty required based on an FSR of 1:15 or the actual number of faculty in the institution. The details of all faculty-related data are sourced from the applicant institution itself, provided in the prescribed NIRF format.
Problem of self-reliance on data
In a paper titled “Unpacking inconsistencies in the NIRF rankings”, published in 2024, Abhishek Singh and V. Ramgopal Rao have identified several inconsistencies, raising concerns about NIRF. Both authors are part of the Birla Institute of Technology and Science. Authors discuss huge fluctuations in the rankings, overemphasis on bibliometrics, subjective nature of perception, challenges in the regional diversity metric, overlooking teaching quality, inadequate transparency in methodology, questions about data integrity and limited global benchmarking.
The paper highlights a serious concern about the reliance on self-reported data by universities. It notes that the efficacy of the NIRF rankings is closely tied to the data submitted by participating institutions, bringing the question of data integrity and reliability to the forefront. Since the rankings depend heavily on information furnished by the institutions themselves, it pointed out that the doubts naturally arise about the precision and trustworthiness of this data.
“In the absence of standardised reporting practices, institutions that are better at presenting data in a favourable manner may gain an advantage over those that genuinely excel in academic parameters. This dynamic has significant implications for the credibility of the rankings, as their reliability ultimately depends on the accuracy and consistency of the data on which they are built,” they cautioned.
Call for reforms in ranking
In a survey carried out in 2024 by India Research Watch (IRW) with 410 respondents, most half of the respondents thought that the data submitted to NIRF could be wrong, says Achal AGRAWAL, Founder at IRW. The validity of data to be the biggest problem with NIRF. This, he said, underscored how heavily the rankings depend on self-reported information from institutions.
Mr. Achal further cautioned that some universities allegedly inflate their faculty numbers by designating office staff as assistant professors without assigning them any teaching responsibilities. In some cases, faculty members are shown as present for inspection purposes or counted despite not taking any courses. “It is very difficult to detect such practices online. Even physical verification may not always expose them,” he said.
As a possible remedy, Mr. Achal suggested random checks and surprise field visits by Central authorities. He argued that universities should be required to report in advance which courses are taught by which faculty, allowing inspectors to verify during the semester whether those courses are indeed being conducted. He added that, along with random inspections, authorities should prioritise verification at institutions where data discrepancies are the most glaring. Further, all the raw data for all the colleges should be released in a tabular format (csv) for the analysis.
On whether NIRF’s claim of independent verification of submitted data was effective, Mr. Achal said it’s not known how often such checks are conducted or whether they lead to corrective action. What remains clear, he concluded, is that reliance on self-reported data creates a conflict of interest and raises questions about accuracy, an issue not unique to NIRF but common across other global ranking systems as well.
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