Congratulations for your pioneer initiative of ranking the country’s autonomous and non autonomous colleges separately (EW April). As you rightly argue, autonomous colleges are a class apart and need to be ranked separately.

Nevertheless, I’m baffled that some of India’s routinely top-ranked colleges sited in the national capital — St. Stephen’s, Miranda, Sri Ram College of Commerce — have not yet been granted academic and administrative autonomy under UGC’s archaic rules and regulations. These colleges with excellent track records — “tied to the apron strings of Delhi University” — should be awarded autonomy immediately.

Maria Gonsalves, Mumbai

Classification error

Re the EW Private Autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21, Kohima Science College is ranked in the category of private autonomous colleges at #75 with a total score of 473. The fact of the matter is that ours is a government autonomous college with a NAAC CGPA score of 3.42 under administration of the department of higher education, government of Nagaland.

This categorisation mistake has created utter confusion in the public and amongst all the stakeholders in the state. Therefore, I request you to correct this error at the earliest.

Dr. Lily Sema Principal, Kohima Science College, Jotsoma

Kohima Science College has been reclassified and ranked #12 in the Government Autonomous Colleges Rankings league table published online (see www.educationworld. in) — Editor

Methodology query

My heartfelt congratulations to you for ranking the country’s autonomous colleges separately. I sincerely appreciate your efforts to include Vimala College, Thrissur in your private autonomous colleges league table. We are happy that our college has been ranked #58 nationwide and #11 in Kerala.

However, I am unsure about the process and variables used to arrive at the rankings. Our college did not submit any documents nor was any verification done from your side. Please enlighten me on your methodology of data collection and verification, and the data source.

Lims Thomas Faculty, Department of Social Work, Vimala College (Autonomous), Thrissur

As detailed in our cover story, the EW India Private Autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21 is based on perceptual scores awarded on five parameters of higher education excellence by 4,813 sample respondents including college/university faculty and final year college students who rated India’s Top 500 colleges — private autonomous, government autonomous and non autonomous. The data source is the UGC list of approved autonomous colleges as on 28.06.2019 (see p.32 EW April) — Editor

Top rank stimulus

IT WAS a pleasure to read that Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam is ranked #1 in the EW Government Autonomous College Rankings 2020-21 (EW April). We are highly motivated by this recognition. It will surely inspire us to work harder to maintain our top rank.

Dr. K. Jayakumar Special Grade Principal Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam

Glaring omission

YOUR EW Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 makes no sense if you ignore and don’t rank universities that provide world-class commerce education. Bangalore hosts excellent private universities — Christ and Jain universities which provide the best commerce education. They are not in your league tables.

If you want to educate people about the best higher ed institutions in India, you need to rank deemed to be universities too.

Preetham on e-mail

As indicated in my letter from the editor (p.4), league tables of India’s best private universities, government universities and private B-schools are scheduled to be published in the current (May) issue — Editor

Misclassification

In the EW Non-autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21 you have wrongly classified Ramkrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Rahara, Kolkata as a non autonomous college. Please note it is a private autonomous college.

Monojit Ray Principal, Barrackpore Rastraguru Surendranath College, Barrackpore

We regret the error — Editor