Why in news?

• The Union health ministry plans to grade and rank government-run medical colleges to improve the quality of medical education.

Highlights:

• Proposed mandatory grading of all government medical colleges and for private institutions grading will be done at a later stage. National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), which grades IIMs in a similar manner, had started ranking medical colleges on its own in 2018. Ranking of medical colleges will be done on the basis of choices of students during counselling.

Significance:

• With good ranking and grades, the medical colleges will compete for best facilities.
• Improve the quality of medical education.
• The move will help in establishing the reputation of medical colleges on an international level.

NIRF parameters:

• Teaching, learning and resources, research and professional practices, graduation outcomes, outreach and inclusivity, and perception.
• The significant sub-parameters are student strength, including doctoral students, faculty-student ratio, total budget and its utilization, research and professional practice,
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and patents filed, published, granted and licensed, percentage of women, economically and socially challenged students, and facilities for physically challenged students.