Directions: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

Paragraph 1: The “who’s who” of universities and research institutions published by the Human Resource Development Ministry, as the National Institutional Ranking Framework, 2018, should be viewed mainly as a proposition that data makes it possible to assign objective credentials to some aspects of education. Its assessment of some of the top institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science, the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the IITs and the IIMs is unsurprising, given their record of research, peer-reviewed publications and outcomes for graduates.

Paragraph 2: Even among the 3,954 institutions that participated, there is a clear skew towards southern, southeastern and western India. Participation levels are inadequate: there were 40,026 colleges and 11,669 standalone institutions according to the HRD Ministry’s All India Survey on Higher Education for 2016-17.

Paragraph 3: To the faculty and students in many colleges, what matters is the vision of the administrative leaders and a commitment to excellence. The governing bodies should make available adequate financial and academic resources to colleges, particularly the younger ones, to help them improve performance. These are measured by the NIRF in terms of the percentage of faculty with doctoral degrees, papers published in credentialed journals, inclusivity and diversity of students, and median salaries for the graduates.