KOLKATA: The steady decline in National Ranking Framework (NIRF), an annual ranking exercise carried out by the education ministry, has prompted IIEST, Shibpur, to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss the reasons behind this and think of ways to improve. The institute has slipped to the 40th position in the engineering category this year from its earlier ranks of 27 in 2021, 21 in 2020 and 19 in 2019. The overall ranking of the institute this year is 66.
IIEST spokesperson Nirmalya Bhattacharyya said the institute's NIRF committee held a meeting this week. TOI tried to contact director Parthasarathi Chakrabarti, but he did not respond.
An institute source said, "Some reasons identified for the poor ranking were bureaucratic attitude of the authority, lack of open teaching-learning environment, not utilising resources, recruiting fewer teachers, and rigid central government rules."
A senior professor and a member of the Board of Governors said, "In the last four-five years, most stakeholders have been alienated from a feeling of ownership of responsibility and welfare of the institute. To improve NIRF ranking, every stakeholder has to provide their full potential and it is the duty of the leadership to motivate them."
The Global Alumni Association of IIEST, Shibpur, has gathered feedback from former students on how to improve the standard.
