DEA ANALYSIS OF NIRF RANKINGS OF ENGINEERING

COLLEGES
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction
2. Problem description
3. Methodology
4. Parameters chosen
5. Solution to the problem
6. Inference
7. Conclusion
8. References
INTRODUCTION

National Institutional Ranking framework (NIRF) is a methodology adopted

by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of
India, to rank institutions of higher education in India. The framework was
approved by the MHRD and launched on 29 September 2015. [1] It uses
several parameters for ranking purposes like resources, research, perception
etc. All these parameters are assigned certain weightages.
National Institute of Technology _ (_) is an autonomous; federally funded
technical university. _ was one of the best engineering colleges in India. But
now the rating of the college has dropped drastically. We, the students of _,
will be going through the NIRF ranking criteria, compare our college with
some selected institutions with better ranks and find the critical factors
governing the ratings. We would analyze the result to understand the factors
that are bringing down our college’s rank and would like to provide a
solution.
To perform the above tasks, a linear programming technique, DEA (Data
Envelopment Analysis) will be used. DEA converts multiple
incommensurable inputs and outputs of each Decision-Making Units (DMU)
into a scalar measure of operational efficiency, relative to its competing
DMU’s. Herein, DMUs refer to the collection of private firms, non-profit
organizations, groups etc. with same goals, functions and standards. [2]
The DEA would also give the weightage given for each input from the
ranking details. This weightage would be compared with the weightage
prescribed in NIRF to check our method’s validity. We will vary the
different inputs and find the corresponding change in the output to find the
effective way to increase the college’s rating.
Problem Description

NIRF published its annual ranking of the engineering colleges based on

different parameters like ‘Teaching ,Learning and Resources’, ’Research and
Professional practises’, ‘Graduation Outcomes’ , ‘Outreach ad Inclusivity’ and
‘perception’. NIT _ has stooped to an ever low 50th rank owing to its downfall
in many of the above mentioned parameters. A careful look into this gave a
plethora of reasons that needs to be carefully analysed and looked into. The 1st
ranked college, IIT Madras, has topped the list in all the parameters and forms
the basis of our analysis. During DEA analysis, the parameters of IIT Madras
where kept as the benchmark for all other colleges. It was found that the overall
efficiency of NIT _ is much lesser compared to IIT Madras. The analysis gave
us a conclusion that the excess of resources used by _ was the primary reason
for its fall in efficiency. Here we have chosen 3 of the parameters as input and 4
as output. The detailed list of parameters and their excess usages have been
mentioned further in the report.
Methodology
DEA is referred to as a linear programming (non-parametric) technique that
converts multiple incommensurable inputs and outputs of each Decision-
Making Unit (DMU) into a scalar measure of operational efficiency, relative to
its competing DMUs. Herein, DMUs refer to the collection of private firms,
non-profit organisations, departments, administrative units and groups with the
same (or similar) goals, functions, standards and market segments. DEA is
designed to identify the best practice DMU without a priori knowledge of which
inputs and outputs are most important in determining an efficiency measure (i.e.
score). DEA determines the following:
 The best practice DMU that uses the least resources to provide its
products or services at or above the quality standard of other DMUs;
 The less efficient DMUs compared with the best practice DMU;
 The amount of excess resources used by each of the less efficient DMUs;
 The amount of excess capacity or ability to increase outputs for less
efficient DMUs without requiring added resources

SAMPLE PROBLEM FOR UNDERSTANDING METHODOLOGY

‘Super labs’ are in Research and Development of electronic goods. The
founders, in the year 2001 decided to set-up their own company to produce
consumer electronic goods that use the state-of-the art technologies that have
been developed by them. The company has set up business in North America
and quickly moved to Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. The main
products of the company are its impressive range of Smart phones, Tablet PCs
and Laptops.
At the beginning of the year 2011, the CEO- global operations of the company
quickly pulled reports of Inputs and Outputs that are being used and produced at
various regions in which company operates.
He arrived at the following figures:
The data tells him how much each of the regions consume for the two main
activities, namely Product development and Marketing, and how many units of
its products are being sold. However, he is unable to figure out, which are the
best performing units and how much of increase or decrease the Regional
directors are to be advised to make on investments.
One of his analysts recommends the use of Data Envelopment Analysis to
analyse the performance of the different units and then make a conclusion. The
analyst also mentioned that the tool can be best used as the inputs and outputs to
the various ‘Decision Making Units’ are the same units ($ spent of product
development, marketing and number of units of each product sold).
The analyst quickly arrived at the following formulation:
For each of the inputs, assign weights 𝑢1, 𝑢2 and assign weights 𝑣1 , 𝑣2 , 𝑣3 for the
outputs. Therefore the formulation for the five DMUs would be as follows:
For Unit 1 (N. America):
Objective function
Maximize 9𝑣1 + 4𝑣2 +16𝑣3
Subject to the constraints:
5u1 + 14u2 = 1
(9𝑣1 + 4𝑣2 +16𝑣3 ) -(5𝑢1 + 14𝑢2 ) ≤ 0
(8𝑣1 + 2𝑣2 +9𝑣3 ) -(10𝑢1 + 18𝑢2 ) ≤ 0
(9𝑣1 + 4𝑣2 +10𝑣3 ) -(9𝑢1 + 16𝑢2 ) ≤ 0
(6𝑣1 + 1𝑣2 +8𝑣3 ) -(7𝑢1 + 12𝑢2 ) ≤ 0
(10𝑣1 + 4𝑣2 +14𝑣3 ) -(9𝑢1 + 16𝑢2 ) ≤ 0
𝑢1, 𝑢2 ≥ 0
𝑣1 , 𝑣2 , 𝑣3 ≥ 0

EFFICIENCY OF N.AMERICA

EFFICIENCY OF EUROPE

SENSITIVITY REPORT FOR EUROPE

EFFICIENCY OF ASIA

EFFICIENCY OF AFRICA
EFFICIENCY OF S.AMERICA

On solving the above linear programming models in Excel for all the units, the
following efficiencies for the DMUs were found.

Now, CEO likes to compare the efficiency of the unit in Europe (inefficient
unit) with other efficient units. It is found that the shadow prices of the efficient
units that are N. America and S. America to be 0.157 and 0.657 respectively.
So, N. America and S. America forms the reference set for Europe. The linear
combination of a particular input for two efficient units using shadow prices as
multiplier, will give the point on the efficient frontier where the inefficient unit
can be projected. That is Europe should brought down the product development
expenses from 10 to 6.698 (5 x 0.157 + 9 x 0.657).

Thus on comparing the inputs and outputs of Europe with that of N and S
America, Europe to reduce Product development and Marketing costs by 3.302
and 5.947 (‘000s of dollar value) and increase sales of Tablets and Laptops by
1.256 and 2.71 units respectively to reach the values of the efficient units. The
sale of Smart phones is however to the level of the efficient units N and S
America. Thus the changes to be made to the other inefficient DMUs can be
analysed.
In this case of NIRF ranking , there are multiple inputs and outputs set as
parameters and a detailed DEA analysis is performed using the excel solver.
Here, the efficiencies of colleges included in the analysis is individually found
out. Weights were assigned to each of the input and output. These weights are
the coefficients for each input and output variable. The coefficients pertaining to
output variables measure the relative decrease in efficiency with each unit
reduction of output variable. The coefficients pertaining to input variables
measure the relative increase in efficiency with each unit reduction of input
variable. These weights can be either provided by the user or can be determined
optimally by using some optimization technique like DEA. The Sensitivity
report for _ has also been devised which is analysed further in the report. The
overall report led us to a unanimous conclusion on the excess use of resources
which further reduced the efficiency of _.
The detailed analysis and the excel solver is given below.

Parameters Used

In this report, an analysis of 10 different colleges has been performed namely

IIT Madras, IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur , IIT Kanpur, NIT Trichy,
NIT Surat, VNIT, NIT Warangal and NIT _.
3 different input parameters like
 Faculty
 UG+PG, and
 annual expenditure has been considered

The 4 different output parameters considered were

 students placed ,
 students opting for higher studies
 publications and
 Patents granted.
EFFICIENCY OF IIT MADRAS

EFFICIENCY OF IIT BOMBAY

EFFICIENCY OF IIT DELHI

EFFICIENCY OF IIT KHARAGPUR

EFFICIENCY OF IIT KANPUR

EFFICIENCY OF NIT TRICHY

EFFICIENCY OF NIT SURAT

EFFICIENCY OF VNIT
EFFICIENCY OF NIT WARANGAL

EFFICIENCY OF NIT _
SENSITIVITY REPORT FOR _
REPORT RESULT
Analysis of the solution:
From the above analysis, we were able to conclude that _ suffered on the excess
of resources which played a major part in bringing down the efficiency.
Moreover, DEA analysis is not found to be the best method to analyse this kind
of a ranking system. DEA analysis is found to be useful when it comes to the
monetary analysis of various institutions. A detailed ranking framework and an
analysis based on the above parameters is thus found to be inconsistent with
DEA , making a comprehensive evaluation difficult.
REFERENCES
1. www.nirfindia.org
2. Min, H. and Park, B-I.(2008) ‘A hybrid Data Envelopment Analysis and
simulation methodology for measuring capacity utilization and
throughput efficiency of container terminals’, Int. J. Logistics Systems
and Management, Vol. 4, No. 6, pp.650-672
3. www.wikipedia.org
4. www._.ac.in