You might have seen the India Today engineering college ranking 2011. Hell lot questions arise after giving it a first look. I wrote about their standard of conducting survey and whole process of making Engineering colleges in India in India Today and Times Of India Ranking of Engineering colleges 2010 sucks. I also argued in detail about their behavior towards misguiding the whole nation.
This year India Today, again played its best selling mantra of season “College Ranking”, make more money of the sales with the magazine cover story. In the quest of making money on addressing the in demand topics they again shown their careless attitude that India Today and other news agencies build in decades. There is no authority to check their reporting and India has been listening to them and trusting them for a long time, despite of their highly irresponsible attitude and a common person not having a way to raise his voice.
The worst thing is India media has largely neglect the internet and social revolution too. They are in still living in old days where people used to trust them. But Younger generation has moved on and we are more in to evaluating the biggest media and news with giving a damn to their reputation. If they are wrong, they are we don’t take their news, if they are right well and good. These days we not only consume we also judge and analyze, thank to internet, social and blogging revolution.
5 Reasons why India Today Ranking Sucks again:
IITB is not ranked
The first and formost reason to crap India today ranking is that the way the Engineering colleges are picked for ranking. How come someone ranking Engineering colleges and miss out IIT Bombay. Its like inviting for a cool dinner with actually giving the location of the party.
As usual VIT is ranked too high
The big fat VIT mistake again. Usually, all the magazine ranking keep VIT pretty high in ranking. This makes whole ranking and surveys look like a drama. NIT Trichy and IIIT Hyderabad are too good to stand in competition with IITs and they are kept down to VIT. Any worst survey couldn’t bring down to VIT.
Survey sin
We all are studying statistics since our high schools. We encounter an equivalent term to Survey, which is sampling. Only sampling with a lots of constrains make the results sensible. Any survey can be easily challenged and can be defeated both mathematically and logically. Socially the term is used by Magazine to hide the mistake they do. Something in magazine and news papers usually referred to report something that they are not sure of.
I don’t say all the surveys are bad. To make a survey good one need to share it with public to gain the trust and confidence. These magazine will neither capable nor strong enough of doing it.
Comparison method
India is a very different country, when compared to education with US and Europe. We have 4 kinds of engineering institutes in general. First comes IITs, they have huge funding and care from central govt. All companies love this brand and you see most of top execs from these Institutes. Another reason of their success is their age too. They are old enough to give execs in any company in the world. One the same time they have done remarkably great in international shows. Next comes the NITs, have good funding from Center but rules are not as strict as IITs. For Example, in IITs all the faculties must be PhD, but this doesn’t apply to NITs. Next come the state universities supported by state govts. and deemed universities, supported by private bodies and trusts. At last come the private colleges in every state. And every Institute has a different exam for taking undergrad students. For master many consider GATE but many take their own exams too.
If they all have their own exam then what is the fun in having all of them in same basket trying to sort them. It’s like we have a fruit basket and we are trying to sort them. But please understand Apples are not Mangos and you cannot compare them to melons. A separated ranking of theses institutes in their own class would help students.
Usefulness for a common student
As whole ranking is done based on the criteria that would stratify some marketing companies instead of students its use for the students is next to zero. Following India Today ranking for admissions will for sure suck anyone’s career.
With this I wish India Today and other Indian publishing houses understand that the things have changed a lot and they need to create a value added content and news for their readers.