How much of each discipline does NIRF cover?
This is the one file in nirf-outcomes/ that reads anything other than NIRF, because measuring
what NIRF does not cover is impossible from NIRF. It uses:
- AISHE
aishe_fact_higher_ed_students,cut='programme_social', 2023-24 — graduates by degree - AICTE
aicte_fact_intake, 2021-22 — approved institutions, engineering and pharmacy - NMC
nmc_fact_mbbs_seats, 2024-25 — medical colleges
Nothing here feeds back into the discipline notes or the board.
Coverage, all eight disciplines
Section titled “Coverage, all eight disciplines”NIRF’s side is every college it has ever ranked, each at its last report. Integrated and dual degrees are included in the sector denominator.
| Discipline | Level | NIRF colleges | Sector colleges | % colleges | NIRF graduates | Sector graduates | % graduates |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | UG | 47 | — | — | 18,082 | 36,049 | 50.2% |
| Engineering | UG | 263 | 2,897 | 9.1% | 222,407 | 823,144 | 27.0% |
| Dental | UG | 62 | — | — | 4,527 | 20,098 | 22.5% |
| Architecture | UG | 45 | — | — | 2,743 | 13,481 | 20.3% |
| Medical | UG | 61 | 780 | 7.8% | 9,357 | 65,836 | 14.2% |
| Management | PG | 100 | — | — | 31,904 | 282,710 | 11.3% |
| Pharmacy | UG | 128 | 661 | 19.4% | 10,139 | 110,805 | 9.2% |
| Law | UG | 47 | — | — | 6,902 | 161,239 | 4.3% |
Coverage varies by a factor of twelve — 50.2% of agriculture graduates against 4.3% of law. Every discipline note describes “the ranked sector”, and that phrase means something very different in each one.
Agriculture is half the field. NIRF ranks 47 colleges and they produce more than half of India’s agriculture graduates, because the discipline is small and concentrated in state agricultural universities.
Law is almost invisible. 47 ranked colleges against 161,239 graduates. Law is taught in thousands of affiliated colleges; NIRF sees the national law universities and little else, so its law board describes an elite tier rather than the profession’s intake.
Pharmacy is the widest gap between the two measures — NIRF ranks 19.4% of pharmacy colleges but covers only 9.2% of graduates, meaning the colleges it ranks are smaller than average. Engineering runs the other way, 9.1% of colleges producing 27.0% of graduates.
Why the degree cut, and not the discipline cut
Section titled “Why the degree cut, and not the discipline cut”AISHE publishes two taxonomies and only one can answer this.
cut='ug_discipline' gives broad subjects — Arts, Science, Engineering & Technology, Medical
Science. Pharmacy, dentistry and architecture do not appear in it at all, in any year. And its
“Medical Science” is 330,839 against M.B.B.S.’s 65,836 — exactly 5.0× — because it is the whole
health cluster: nursing, pharmacy, paramedical. Used as a denominator for doctors it overstates
fivefold.
cut='programme_social' gives named degrees — 253 of them in 2023-24 — and maps onto what NIRF
actually ranks.
An earlier version of this note reported pharmacy, dentistry and architecture as impossible to size. That was wrong, and it was wrong because the schema documented the degree cut as covering “2021-22 only” when it covers seven years. Fixed in external_data_sources#77.
What each denominator includes
Section titled “What each denominator includes”| Discipline | Degrees counted |
|---|---|
| Engineering | B.Tech., B.E., B.Tech-M.Tech, B.C.E., B.Ch.E., B.Chem.Tech. |
| Law | LL.B., B.A. LL.B., B.L., B.B.A.-LL.B., B.Com-LL.B., B.B.A-LL.B(Hons), B.G.L., LL.B.(Hons), B.Sc. LL.B. |
| Management | M.B.A., Integrated M.B.A., M.B.A.(Tech.), M.B.A.(Pharma. Tech.), Integrated B.B.A-M.B.A. |
| Pharmacy | B.Pharm., Pharm.D., B.Pharm.(Ayu.) |
| Medical · Dental · Architecture · Agriculture | M.B.B.S. · B.D.S. · B.Arch. · B.Agri. |
Integrated degrees matter most in law: LL.B. alone is 114,782, but the five-year integrated degrees the national law universities actually award add 33,415 — about a fifth of the field. Excluding them would have overstated NIRF’s law coverage by a quarter.
Level follows NIRF. Management is measured against M.B.A., not B.B.A., because NIRF’s management track is postgraduate. Pharmacy uses B.Pharm. and not D.Pharma, which is a diploma.
Institution counts come from the regulator, not AISHE
Section titled “Institution counts come from the regulator, not AISHE”Only three exist: AICTE for engineering (2,897) and pharmacy (661), NMC for medical (780). Dentistry (DCI), architecture (CoA), law (BCI) and agriculture (ICAR) are licensed by bodies whose registers are not loaded here, so those disciplines get a graduate share and no college share — reported as blank rather than estimated.
Caveats
Section titled “Caveats”- NIRF’s graduate counts are mixed vintage — each college at its last report, spanning 2015-16 to 2023-24 — while AISHE is a single year. Read the shares as approximate.
- Different years across sources. AISHE 2023-24, AICTE 2021-22, NMC 2024-25. The institution shares in particular are approximate for that reason.
- This says nothing about outcomes below the ranking. NIRF observes no unranked college. What happens at the other 91% of engineering colleges is unmeasured here, and an earlier attempt to project it by fitting curves was removed because the projection turned out to be a choice of functional form rather than a finding.
- AISHE requires
gender='Total'. Summing across gender doubles every figure.