By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR: Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) Deemed to be University here has maintained its pre-eminent position to be placed 15th among universities in the country in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings for 2023 released by Union minister of state for Education and External Affairs, Rajkumar Ranjan Singh in New Delhi on Monday.
This is the first time that SOA, a multi-disciplinary Deemed to be University, has broken into the select list of top 15 institutions of higher learning while being ranked 26th in the overall category jumping four places from the 30th position it occupied last year.
SOA, which was ranked 16th in the country in 2022, has continuously finished in the list of top 25 institutions of higher learning in the country for eight years since the inception of the NIRF rankings by the Ministry of Education in 2016. Of these, SOA had been ranked within the top 20 universities on six occasions.
SOA also improved its rank in Medical Sciences, Dental Sciences and Law this time. In Medical Sciences, it improved its position from 18th in 2022 to 16th in the country while in Law it finished at 8th (9th in 2022) and in Dental Sciences it has been placed 9th (10th in 2022). In the overall, university, medical sciences, dental sciences and law categories, SOA has finished at the top of the list in Odisha in 2023.
The university’s faculty of engineering and technology continued to occupy the 27th position which it got in 2022 to be placed second in the state behind NIT, Rourkela. The university’s faculty of Management Sciences, which was ranked for the first time in NIRF this year, was placed 57th in the country to finish second in the state behind XIIM University.
The latest NIRF rankings showed that in the eastern region, SOA was positioned number one in Medical Sciences and Dental Sciences and number two in law. In the university category, it was placed third in the region while in overall category, it was placed fourth. In engineering, SOA was positioned 5th in eastern India.
SOA had been reaccredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) last year with the highest Grade A++.
SOA’s Founder President Prof. (Dr.) Manojranjan Nayak expressed his happiness over the ranks obtained by the university while congratulating the faculty, researchers and other employees and exhorting them to continue their relentless effort to help SOA scale new heights.
Prof. Pradipta Kumar Nanda, Vice-Chancellor of SOA, thanked all concerned for the university’s progress. “We must continue the hard work to ensure that the university is ranked among the top ten universities of the country within the next five years,” he said.
