law school rankings
Ramlu wants moolah: RMLNLU Lucknow on Saturday decided to raise its fees from the current Rs 80,000 per year to an, as yet, undecided amount, which “will be at par with other national law schools”. However, “the university will consider the financial status of students who come from UP before finalising the fees”, according to university sources [TOI]
CCI short staffed: The Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) director general AK Chauhan has asked for direct recruits for his office up to at least 25 per cent of the CCI’s total employees, after being faced with a manpower crunch. [ET]
Inadequate drug tests: Serial PIL filer, who started a PIL against Ranbaxy in the Supreme Court this month, has argued that the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO) suffers from inadequate infrastructure and staff shortages, causing new drugs to be approved for the Indian market by short-circuiting testing (and in some cases not testing them at all on Indian patients) [BS]
Outlook ranks NLS: Outlook India magazine ranked NLSIU Bangalore as India’s “best” law college, ahead of Nalsar Hyderabad, NLIU Bhopal, NUJS Kolkata, ILS Pune and NLU Jodhpur, Symbiosis Pune, GNLU Gandhinagar. Ninth was Amity Delhi, followed by New Law College Pune BVDU, Jamia Islamia Delhi, VHU Varanasi, MS Ramaiah Bangalore, Osmania University Hyderabad and Bangalore Institute of Legal Studies [Ranking, via Bar & Bench]. Rival weekly India Today ranked Nalsar Hyderabad as India’s “best” law school last week. Legally India has reduced coverage of third party law school rankings since last year.
Nalsar tops India Today: Nalsar Hyderabad displaced NLSIU Bangalore at first place in India’s top 25 law colleges this year according to India Today. NLSIU, Delhi University, NUJS Kolkata, NLIU Bhopal, GNLU Gandhinanar, Symbiosis Pune, NLU Jodhpur, ILS Pune, AMU Aligarh, BHU Varanai and Amity Law School Delhi follow Nalsar, in that order. [Rankings via India Today] Legally India has reduced coverage of third party law school rankings since last year.
Sweeping marriages: As social media buzz continued about the Madras HC maintenance order on sex and marriages, former Madras HC judge K Chandru “warns against the tendency to make sweeping statements in family matters”, saying that the Justice CS Karnan’s judgment reported yesterday is likely to be “misunderstood” by subordinate courts, which might force people into relationships merely because they have had sexual intercourse. [Times of India] Karnan, in turn, today defended the judgment, saying it was misunderstood, and “not only for the purpose of giving relief to the victim woman, but also to maintain the cultural integrity of India” [Hindu]
Suicidal state of affairs: “Treating a person who is driven to take such a drastic step as a hard-core criminal violates basic human dignity in a way few other actions do,” argues psychiatrist Dr Ashoka Jahnavi Prasad about the law criminalising suicide attempts. He says that India should follow the example of 59 countries who have decriminalised attempted suicide. [Newslaundry]
Anti-PRISM PIL: Ex-Delhi University law prof, Professor SN Singh, files PIL to stop government using US internet companies’ services, and prays for government to take action against for breach of privacy, after US internet companies were revealed to have shared data of non-US citizens with US spies in leaked top secret documents [PTI]
Nuals Kochi drops behind RMLNLU Lucknow and CNLU Patna but seven oldest national law schools stay top.
One of the few things that get law student readers on Legally India as excited as reading about jobs are the league tables of colleges drawn up by publications every year. But do they do so needlessly, asks Kian Ganz.
Previous years’ coverage of various national magazines’ law school rankings has turned into a bit of a media circus and has not really contributed in any way to improving the quality or transparency of Indian legal education.
The magazines’ law school rankings have been often criticised and little understood, while colleges’ rank often varied widely and seemingly randomly from year to year. Please feel free to read previous stories, drama and hundreds of comments on this topic.
Legally India has therefore taken an editorial decision not to analyse, publicise or give major editorial space to such magazines’ rankings.
India Today magazine has ranked Nalsar Hyderabad as the best law school in the country followed by NLSIU Bangalore in second spot, with the magazine citing the college’s two consecutive wins in Legally India’s Mooting Premier League (MPL) as a factor.
National magazine Outlook India has ranked four national law schools as India’s best law colleges followed by two private Pune schools but following a spat with the magazine last year, NUJS Kolkata declined to provide data and was not included in the list while NLU Jodhpur re-entered this year in fourth place.
Exclusive analysis: NLSIU Bangalore still topped preferences among 2011 Common Law Admissions Test (CLAT) takers but NUJS Kolkata made up ground to second-most-popular Nalsar Hyderabad with eight going against convention. Plus, Legally India’s new Super 30 shows NLU Jodhpur on par with NLIU Bhopal.
Outlook India defended itself against the criticisms in last year’s complaint by NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer and two students against Outlook and India Today for publishing allegedly error-riddled and misleading law school rankings. Outlook revealed the details of its complex weighting system of ranking but declined to publish further information, in what the NUJS complainants called a ‘lackadaisical manner’.
NUJS Kolkata professor Shamnad Basheer and two students have threatened to complain to the Press Council of India about the law school rankings of national magazines Outlook India and India Today, which they allege suffered from "gross inaccuracies and methodological flaws" that violated "canons of journalistic ethics" and did a great disservice to students.
Gotcha!
Yea! I know why you opened this post. You are insecure. You wanted to know, “Who does this napster think he is? My college is way better than GNLU.”
Well, I have to tell you. I wrote this post just to prove that we are all acceptance seekers. If someone says that your college is the best then you will like him even though you know that what he is saying is all hogwash.
I am just trying to show what a small title can do.
Why do we keep worrying about what other people think of our college?
How does it even matter?
If you like your college, then it’s good enough. Let other’s speak what they want.
I am tired of reading and hearing arguments about which college is better, which college has what rank, which college is the ‘best’. If the comparison of different national law schools was not enough, we had the entry of debates, no wait, they were not debates, they were arguments, about whether three year colleges are better or five year colleges. Five year colleges have divisions of NLUs and Non-NLUs. How nice!
So, all we do is fight online. Whatever happened to ‘healthy arguments’.
Some people like to boast that their college is Number 1 or 2 or 4. I have just one thing that I need to tell you, I don’t care what rank your college is, or even mine. All I care is that my college gives me the best it can and keeps on improving. That I can give my college my best and come out of it as a better person.
This might seem like a very stupid issue to be a blog post but it’s not. It is one issue that has been excessively discussed on all the websites and public forums. I personally think that people who argue on it are just plain jobless. Will your college’s performance go up if you won an argument about it online?
Just like all mothers think, their child is the best. All students think their college is the best. They cannot take criticism. No one can. They don’t just deny things. They fight over it like dogs.
People have stopped trusting their instincts. Now they rely only on ranking to know how they feel about their college. They don't think for themselves. If you let someone else judge you then you will always face grief.
There are many kinds of people who are part of such ‘debates’. One, who state reasons why they think their college is the best. Another so state the negative aspects of other colleges to make their college look better. Another, who think that such debates are futile but in the end, they end up joining the debate. I have seen people who first say that they are not affected by such ‘rankings’ and then later on give us a list of their own. Bravo!
But, there is one kind, which sits on a chair and laments the fact that people around law schools are becoming so insecure.
I am one of them.
Stop it. Please.
Disclaimer:
This post is written out of frustration that has crept in after years of reading long futile debates on who is the best. The names in the title are chosen randomly. No offence to India Today and Outlook. I was one of the people who got carried away and commented. I was stupid. Now I have learnt. They are just giving the public what it wants. Entertainment.
Check out the ranking. It has 212 comments. I am pretty sure the views would be higher than any other quality blog on this website.
Indian weekly magazines India Today and Outlook India have both ranked NLSIU Bangalore and Nalsar Hyderabad as India's top law schools, while NLIU Bhopal and ILS Pune occupied third place in each respective ranking and NUJS Kolkata found itself in sixth and fifth place.
Another week, another law school ranking: national daily Mint has ranked the large national law colleges in the top five positions, in its India's best colleges supplement it published today.
Mint has placed National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bangalore in first, closely followed by Nalsar University of Law, Hyderabad and National University of Juridicial Sciences, Kolkata (NUJS).
The schools in the top three positions were unchanged since last year, and achieved 637, 627 and 619 points respectively in the rankings.
The runners up in fourth and fifth were National Law University, Jodhpur and National Law Institute University, Bhopal, which swapped places from their positions last year.
Mint's methodology used a combination of the rankings used by India Today magazine and Outlook magazine last week. Mint contacted faculty members and legal professionals with a questionnaire, asking them to rate each of intellectual capital, pedagogic systems and processes, placements, and "infrastructure and support systems".
Each category was weighted with intellectual capital being allocated 250 points down to infrastructure and support systems, which was worth 150 points.
The paper did not publish the sample size used.
Faculty of Law Delhi University came sixth; Government Law College, Mumbai jumped up the rankings to seventh; ILS Law College, Pune was unchanged at eight; Amity Law School, Delhi made it into the top ten for the first time at nine; and Symbiosis Law School, Pune closed the list at ten.
Click here for a PDF of the full ranking on livemint.com.
Have a look at India Today's and Outlook India's competing law school rankings, which excited heated debate from readers last week.