NIRF Ranking 2025: New category, negative marking; what changes this year?

The National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking 2025 is expected this month. The Ministry of Education will announce a date after which the Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan will release the category-wise rankings of Indian colleges and universities.

Launched in September 2015, NIRF assesses and ranks higher education institutions across the country on the basis of a methodology adopted after the recommendations of a core committee.

This year, the annual ranking is undergoing major changes including a new category and research factor, as per media reports.

Last year, HEIs were ranked in 16 categories including overall, engineering, pharmacy, management, architecture and planning, agriculture and allied sectors, law, medical, dental, innovation, skill university, open university, state public university, colleges, research institutions, and universities.

Also read IMI Delhi adopting ‘comprehensive branding strategy’ to improve NIRF rank among b-schools

NIRF 2025: What’s new this year?

For the 2025 rankings, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), which oversees the NIRF, has reportedly introduced a new category on sustainability under which institutions will be ranked on their compliance of sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Additionally, a negative marking for retraction of research papers has been announced for the first time. The institutions will get negative scoring under the ‘research and professional practices’ parameter for either the number or percentage of retracted publications based on a formula.

Also read NIRF rankings have inconsistencies that raise concerns about reliability, says paper

NIRF 2025 Ranking: Existing parameters

The institutions are usually ranked on the basis of the following five parameters:

• Teaching, Learning and Resources
• Research and Professional Practice
• Graduation Outcomes
• Outreach and Inclusivity
• Perception

Each parameter is further divided into sub-parameters and has been assigned a weightage.

NIRF Ranking 2025: Why Madras HC stayed list?

Following a petition alleging malpractices and lack of transparency in NIRF rankings, the Madras High Court in March put an interim stay on the NIRF ranking 2025 list. In his plea, the petitioner alleged that the NIRF ranking is published without any verification or auditing of the data submitted by the institutions, and that many universities are providing false information to improve their ranking just to attract more students and companies.