New Delhi: In the foothills of the Aravallis and in the relative silence of Delhi’s Dhaula Kuan sits a college that has, in the last five years, quietly become one of Delhi University’s best.
For DU alumni, Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma (ARSD) College is as nondescript as they come. Founded in 1959 by the Hindu organisation Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, this DU college was never as famed or coveted as peers like Miranda House, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and St. Stephen’s.
But something seems to have changed over the last few years — ARSD went from rank 14 among colleges in the Ministry of Education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) 2018, to No. 6 this year, pulling ahead of traditionally celebrated DU institutes like Kirori Mal College and LSR (shared rank 9 on NIRF 2023), SRCC (11) and St. Stephen’s (14).
The Ministry of Education released the NIRF Rankings 2023 Monday.
Much of this, according to staff, is because of the South Campus college’s push to better itself. According to them, nearly a decade worth of hard work is now paying off — the broken benches and dirty corridors have given way to a colourful and graffitied campus with manicured lawns. And with this came a discernible change in its reputation.
“We have been focusing on research and innovation for the last few years,” ARSD Principal G.K. Jha told ThePrint. “Our faculty publishes research papers in renowned science journals. Even our undergraduate students are writing research papers and working on live science projects. Apart from this, our placement records have also improved over the years. All these factors have led to improvement in perception about the college.”
Indeed, the transformation is now being noticed.
“If you ask the old-timers in DU, they will tell you that this college was nowhere on the radar for serious students. Most of the students were local residents and those who are uninterested in studies,” Kamlesh Mishra, who teaches history at DU, told ThePrint. “Over the last decade, the college has worked towards changing its image, infrastructure, faculty, services, administration… everything has improved.”
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Focus on research
According to the NIRF’s 2023 rankings of colleges released Monday, only five colleges — Miranda House, Hindu College, Presidency College, PSGR Krishnammal College for Women and St. Xavier’s College — are ahead of ARSD.
Of these, three — Coimbatore’s PSGR Krishnammal College for Women, Kolkata’s St. Xavier’s College, and Chennai’s Presidency College — are non-DU colleges.
The NIRF ranks institutions on four parameters — teaching learning, graduate outcomes, research, and perception. A perusal of the rankings from the last few years shows that ARSD has shown consistent improvement on all four parameters, but especially in research and perception.
From the 24 points that it scored in 2018 for research, the college gradually improved its score each year to finally reach 80.54 points in 2023. Likewise, the parameter for perception also saw a rise, going from 19.45 points in 2018 to 39.64 points in 2023.
In 2017, the year the Ministry of Education, then known as the Human Resource Development Ministry, first introduced NIRF for colleges as a separate category, ARSD was placed at No. 5. But not many colleges across the country participated in the exercise that year, and ARSD officials conceded to ThePrint that it wasn’t a fair assessment of the college.
But the fact that the college ranked No. 14 the very next year, when several colleges did participate, gave the college and its staff the confidence that it could compete well in a larger group, said ARSD Principal Jha.
The college offers 17 courses in three streams — arts, science, and commerce .
Currently, ARSD is working on several projects — both helmed by students and professors— in collaboration with other departments in DU. Some of these projects are also sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Star College Scheme, an initiative for improving scientific temper and critical thinking among undergraduate students.
The college also provides research opportunities to its teaching faculty — according to Jha, the college has a dedicated lab for faculty research with free access to the necessary material.
In 2022, ARSD faculty members published over 250 papers in various journals, according to the college administration.
“Nothing has happened overnight. The college staff and faculty have been making constant efforts for the last few years to finally see this day,” Jha said, adding that good placements also contributed to its growth.
“Our students are placed in companies like Deloitte, Ernst and Young, KPMG, UpGrad, Bajaj Finance, and Yamaha, among others. We have really worked hard on placements over the years. We have taken feedback from the companies about our students and tried to improve the parameters where they were lagging behind,” Jha said.
Hiring more permanent faculty
Apart from academics, ARSD has a robust cultural scene — its ‘Rangayan’ is considered among DU’s best theatre societies.
The college counts some well-known celebrities among its alumni, including Bollywood actor Rajkummar Rao and television journalist Sudhir Chaudhary. Both sit on the “glory board” — a board with clippings of the college’s achievements — in the principal’s room.
According to the college administration, its high number of permanent faculty members has helped improve their teacher-student ratio, and also contributed towards its research — the college currently has 126 permanent faculty members and has a high absorption rate of ad-hoc teachers.
This is a significant detail, especially given DU’s poor track record when it comes to retaining ad-hoc faculty.
Teachers at other colleges agree that the college’s staffing decisions have helped it grow.
“One of the best things that the college has done is hiring (more) permanent faculty members. That has really made an improvement in the college,” Rajesh Jha, who teaches political science at Delhi’s Rajdhani College, told ThePrint. “Even the ad-hoc teachers are absorbed here as permanent faculty, which is great for the morale of young teachers.”
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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