Mumbai: In the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) released by the Ministry of Education on Monday, St. Xavier’s is the only college from Mumbai to have secured a position in the top 100 institutes from across the country.
Ranked 89th, St. Xavier’s was competing with 78 other colleges from the city that failed to secure a position. Though happy with the outcome, St. Xavier’s Principal, Dr Rajendra D Shinde, said he would strive for a higher ranking in the coming years.
In an exclusive interview with the FPJ, Dr Shinde said his long-term goal is to be in the top 10. Since 2016, NIRF has listed St. Xavier’s thrice in its Top 100 list. He mentioned the "lack of infrastructure" as the biggest challenge in ranking higher. Here are the excerpts from the interview:
What makes St. Xavier’s stand out in Mumbai?
There is a combination of things. We strive to provide the best quality of education to all our students and we want to be consistent about it. We believe in holistic development of students. As our motto says—Innovation, Integration, and Inclusion—we strive for these qualities to be ingrained in our students. We want our students to do more than just what is required. We push them to do more to achieve greater excellence and we provide tremendous exposure to our talented bunch of students, and when they do well, naturally the college does well.
Secondly, we have always been ahead of time in wanting our students to achieve better not just in education, but also life. For example, the National Education Policy (NEP), which came into force recently, wants students to carry out social services. We have been encouraging our students to do so since 1996. Another thing is that we offer multi-disciplinary courses. The NEP talks about multidisciplinarity now, but it has been there in our college for the last 40 years. These things lead to overall growth of students and eventually their growth helps us rank constantly in the top 100 in NIRF ratings. (Since 2016, NIRF has listed St. Xavier’s thrice in its list of top 100 colleges in India.)
Why are these rankings important?
All funding agencies ask for NIRF ratings and National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) ratings. The higher our ranking, the easier it is for research proposals of our students/ faculties to get approved.
Are you satisfied with the 89th rank?
I am not very satisfied with the ranking. I ideally want this college to rank in the top 10, or even top 5. When you see the rankings, you can say there is a huge gap. We are ranked much below at 89. But when you see the scores, we mostly lack in two aspects: public perception and research quality. Our conscious efforts, however, have ensured that we improve our marks in quality of research. In 2018, NIRF awarded us only 7.47 marks out of 100 in research quality. Six years later, in 2024, we have improved our marks from less than seven and a half to 30.15. This has happened because we have put in honest efforts to improve our quality of research. We have also started offering seed money of Rs. 1 lakh to our faculty members who wish to conduct research.
The thing about public perception, another area where we lack, is that it is not in our hands. Unlike research, our marks in this area have only reduced from 60 out of 100 in 2018 to 44.72% this year. What can we do about it? Still, we have been trying out things to improve in this regard as well. We have significantly increased our presence of all social media apps like X, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. One thing I can assure you is that we are always striving to be better.
Your marks in ‘Teaching & Learning Responsibilities’ have also been on a constant decline.
It is because NIRF awards marks for the TLR based on several factors. Most important of them all is the total experience of the staff. In the last five years, 30 professors from my college have retired. When experienced professors retire, you are bound to lose some marks there. Another thing that is impacting our score in this regard is the student-teacher ratio. When a college has a student-teacher ratio of below 20, they are awarded marks. Others lose out. All of the colleges in Maharashtra lose out marks in this regard.
What is the current student-teacher ratio at St. Xavier’s?
It currently stands at 37:1, that is just one teacher for 37 students. And talking about TLR, it is not always in our hands. If you see the ratings, our graduate outcome has improved from 59.3% in 2018 to 74.17% this year. This has improved because we have drastically increased our alumni connect activities in the past few years. In other areas as well, we will improve further.
Finally, where do you see St. Xavier’s rank in the coming years?
Like I said earlier, I would like to rank in the top 10. But there are several challenges in achieving that. To achieve greater heights, more and better infrastructure is needed. It is (St. Xavier’s campus) a heritage structure. We’ve the limitation that we can not grow horizontally or vertically. If infrastructure gets better, we will have more classrooms and it will help our students and hence our rankings. Not being able to provide better infrastructure is also hampering our score in public perception. Still, we are trying our best. We have recently launched new skill-oriented courses to make more skilled graduates. These things will help us rank better. I can be on a safe side and say that our efforts will ensure we rank somewhere between 60 to 70 in 2025.
