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What rankings don’t tell us about our universities

Are our universities, including the ‘top ranking’ ones, truly celebrating the spirit of academic freedom and critical enquiry?

Avijit Pathak

Updated At : 05:54 AM Aug 19, 2025 IST

Not libertarian: Will the NIRF bother to know if professors and students fear asking questions that unsettle the status quo? Tribune photo

We live in a world that loves numbers and statistics. It reduces even a highly qualitative experiences into some sort of measurable data. My discomfort with this obsessive craze for quantification has led me to interrogate the prevalent practice of ranking our colleges and universities and reducing the experience of exploring the frontiers of knowledge to pure metrics — the statistics of publications, the quantification of citations, the collaboration with industries, or the employability of students.

The Tribune, now published from Chandigarh, started publication on February 2, 1881, in Lahore (now in Pakistan). It was started by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia, a public-spirited philanthropist, and is run by a trust comprising five eminent persons as trustees.

The Tribune, the largest selling English daily in North India, publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind. Restraint and moderation, rather than agitational language and partisanship, are the hallmarks of the newspaper. It is an independent newspaper in the real sense of the term.

The Tribune has two sister publications, Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi) and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi).

Remembering Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia

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What rankings don’t tell us about our universities

Avijit Pathak

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