News & Updates

Taking cue from the HRD ministry's recent move of issuing rankings to Indian universities and the country's engineering, management and pharmaceutical institutes, the agriculture ministry has decided to rank 73 agricultural universities.

The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences has prepared a ranking framework and the ministry will soon ask the universities to participate.Technology transfer to farmers, increase in agricultural growth in the area of jurisdiction of the university , quality inputs (seed, semen and planting materials) supplied by the universities, teaching and research impact and research excellence will be among the key parameters of evaluation.

Sources said minister of state for agriculture Sanjeev Kumar Balyan has himself handled the entire ranking project. “Once agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh approves it, the ministry will hopefully announce the move next week,“ said an official.

The opinion of award-winning and progressive farmers will also be taken into consideration while ranking the universities as part of stakeholders perception. Broadly , it has been decided to assign 35 marks to `teaching outcome and facility', followed by 33 marks to `research', 20 to `extension' (technologies transferred to farmers the lab to land activity), 7 to stakeholders' perception and 5 to linkages (inter-institutional collaborative projects and partnership with private sector R&D institutions and impact).

(ToI)