In 100th year, RTMNU wading through excuses for poor NIRF ranking
| Date :30-Jun-2023 |
Staff Reporter
Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU), which is in its 100th year, and is carrying on legacy of several stalwarts in various fields, has been continuously failing to improve its National Institute of Ranking Framework (NIRF) ranking. The universtiy has never been in the top 15. The shameful part is every failure has some or the other reason, but the strange part here in this case is, the RTMNU has not taken any passionate effort to achieve the top spot. The will to get top ranking was never there. When ‘The Hitavada’ talked to its past Vice Chancellors in this regard, they gave excuses such as staff crunch, lack of proactiveness on the Government’s part, inadequte funds, and restrictions on staff recruitment. Many such factors made it difficult for the university to secure top rank, they complained.
Former Vice Chancellors Dr Vilas Sapkal, Dr S P Kane, Dr Vinayak Deshpande raised one common point -- that in the past 15 years, the State Government has not allowed them recruitment of teaching and non-teaching staff. Also, the RTMNU never got timely apprvoal for the required facilities from the Government. According to all three V-Cs, lack of staff hampered the work that could help the University to grow. The recruitment did take place to some extent during the regime of Dr Sapkal, but that was not enough. However, do these factors really matter as far as ranking is concerned? For the past several years, barring a few departments, nobody is conducting research. Research doesn’t need any staff or funding, as most research projects receive money from the respective sources. There are several departments at the national level which provide funds to the projects. Why didn’t the university come up with research projects then? The University bosses have no answers to this question.
The reality is, the University failed to develop such research acumen. As far as the issue of staff crunch is concerned, that has been haunting every university, then why only RTMNU suffers is losing its rank due to this? When the current and ex-Vice Chancellors were asked if the faculty or students ever approached them or aggressively asked for research facilities, they did not have any answer, which proves that the University did not develop the research acumen in past many years. The tenure of present Vice Chancellor Dr Subhash Chaudhari can be called as the luckiest one. During his tenure, the University got opportunities to become the host of prestigious Indian Science Congress, Pharmaceutical Congress. It also was the partner of C 20, the inception conference of G20. What more one needs to get on top? Surprisingly, the present administration could not garner top NIRF ranking on the basis of these top conferences, this year also.
Dr Raju Mankar, former Vice Chancellor of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Technological University (BATU), now the Director of Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT) did not speak about the lack of staff, funding etc. He clearly stated, “Our performance is not upto the mark in all the parameters prescribed by NIRF. We have never did our Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis.” As the former three Vice Chancellors talked about the lack of staff, did our university ever thought of strengthening library facilities, taking stakeholders into confidence? The answer is no. People’s perception about university is an important parameter and it was always ignored. RTMNU gets zero mark under the public opinion parameter. According to Dr Mankar, RTMNU is participating in NIRF ranking since beginning. Then there were less participants. Now the participants have increased. Considering the rise in number of participants, RTMNU should prepare itself. It should study the questions put by NIRF team and prepare the exact expected answers to the querries. Proper outsourcing of agencies those help in preparing documents should be done. RTMNU is not doing that, pointed out Dr Mankar.
RTMNU has never tried to introduce the diversity that helps to branding of the institutions. Private universities or institutions along with the academics organise various extracurricular events. The bosses who had been running university had never have high ambitions for the institution. University never tried to become student-centric. It is evident from the incidents of examination and result goof-ups. Former bosses talk about the lack of fund, but university has over Rs 200 crore in its personal account which could have been utilised in systematic manner for the development of the university. Even the Senate members and the other ones who were on various bodies never played pro-active role. Adv Manmohan Bajpai the Senate Member expressed his regret, “I attribute the downfall to poor administration and mismanagement alongside the role of authority members those who are not taking part in the process. I myself am equally responsible for this degradation.”