Jaypee, Shoolini varsities ranked among top 100

Ambika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, April 4

Two private universities of the state — Jaypee University of Information Technology and Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences — have been ranked 37th and 66th among the top 100 universities in the country. The Ministry of Human Resource Development’s first National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) was released today by Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Higher Education.

Since both the universities are housed in Solan district, it has become an educational hub. While the managements of the two universities attribute this honour to the strict stipulations of the HP Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission, the presence of highly experienced faculty, excellent placement records and thrust on research has helped in bagging the honour.

None of the five government universities, including Central University, found any place among the top 100 universities. The rankings were carried out for the first time under four categories — universities, engineering

colleges, pharmacy colleges and business management schools — with over 700 universities and several thousand colleges participating in the exercise. There are 12 universities (both public and private) from the states of Punjab, Haryana, Jammu and

Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh featuring on the list. No university from Uttarakhand could make it to the list. Dean, Biotechnology, Jaypee university, Dr Chauhan said they had built credibility at the national level among government and private universities in a short span of 14 years by virtue of their core academic and research strengths, external funding to the tune of Rs 25 crore from almost all agencies of the Government of India, DBT, DST, DRDO, ICMR and MoEF.

The Jaypee University of Information Technology has filed 20 patents on various technologies developed by the UG/PG students and faculty. The university is marching towards excellence by implementing outcome-based education model.

Shoolini University established in 2009 is the youngest to find a place among the 100 universities. It also competed in the pharmacy ranking and its School of Pharmaceutical Sciences was ranked 19th in the country. Chitkara School of Pharmacy was placed at the 17th position on the list.

Prof PK Khosla, Vice-Chancellor, Shoolini University, said he was happy that the university was able to compete with over 700 universities, many of them were pampered by government funds.