The annual EW rankings deliberately exclude IITs and NITs from our league tables to enable 98 percent of students who don’t make it into these routinely top-ranked government institutes to choose the most suitable among India’s 3,415 private engineering colleges, writes Summiya Yasmeen
Introduced in 2013, the annual EducationWorld pan-India engineering college rankings league tables are sui generis and differentiated from the ranking of other magazines and dailies including pink papers. Although initially for two years, the EW league tables included and ranked the Central-government promoted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), in 2016 we excluded these highly-subsidised institutions because they routinely topped all league tables and also because they admit a mere 2 percent of the 1.3 million class XII graduates who write the annual IIT/NIT Joint Entrance Exam. Instead, the annual EW survey opted to rate and rank the country’s private engineering colleges to enable 98 percent of students who don’t make it into the IITs/NITs to choose the most suitable among India’s 3,415 non-government engineering colleges, some of whom are closing the IITs/NITs versus the rest gap.
To compile the EW India Private Engineering Institutes Rankings (EWIPEIR) 2022-23, the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), which also conducts our pioneer annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India Preschool Rankings (2010), interviewed 2,893 sample respondents including 1,136 engineering colleges faculty, 1,288 final year students and 469 industry representatives countrywide. These sample respondents were persuaded to rate engineering institutes/colleges (of whom they had sufficient knowledge) on nine parameters of excellence — faculty competence, placement, research and innovation, industry interface, value for money, infrastructure, faculty welfare, leadership and governance, and curriculum and pedagogy (digital readiness). Digital readiness rating was introduced last year to assess engineering colleges’ transition to the online digital medium during the pandemic education lockdown. The scores awarded by respondents under each parameter were totaled to rank the country’s Top 100 private engineering colleges/institutes inter se. Low-profile institutions assessed by less than 25 respondents are not ranked.
IIIT-Hyderabad campus
The 2022-23 league table of India’s best private engineering institutes has undergone a makeover. Ranked #1 for three consecutive years (2019-21), the high-profile Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani (conferred deemed university status under s.3 of the UGC Act, 1956 in 1964) has ceded top rank in 2022-23 to the low-profile International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIIT-H) and Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), jointly ranked #1. BITS-Pilani is ranked #2 followed by Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information & Communication Technology, Gandhinagar at #3, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore at #4 and Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala at #5 — all of whom have retained their last year’s rankings.
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Last ranked #1 in 2018-19, IIIT-H, the country’s first ICT (information communication technologies) engineering college promoted under the state government-private partnership model in 1998, is awarded highest scores under seven of the nine parameters of engineering education excellence including competence of faculty, curriculum and pedagogy (digital readiness), leadership and governance, placements and value for money.
Expectedly, Dr. P.J. Narayanan, director of IIIT-H, is delighted with the institute’s stellar overall performance in the “comprehensive” EW rankings survey. “We are happy to be ranked India’s #1 engineering higher education institution. IIIT-H is known for research-led education offered from the undergraduate to doctorate level, and transdisciplinary programmes which combine computer science with other subjects in natural sciences, linguistics and humanities. That’s why our research-oriented graduates are highly prized by academia and industry. Though I am pleased that our efforts on all parameters of engineering education excellence have been recognised and appreciated, I am especially happy with our #1 rank for faculty competence as it forms the basis of achieving excellence in teaching and research. Our faculty members have doctorates from premier Indian institutions such as the IITs and IISc as well as top-ranked global institutions such as Cornell, Princeton, Tokyo universities. We also benefit immensely from industry experts as adjunct faculty. IIIT-H is committed to focusing on applied research in technology with special attention to the use of computing and artificial intelligence to solve problems in healthcare, intelligent transportation, school education, etc,” says Narayanan, an alum of IIT-Kharagpur and the University of Maryland, and former professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, USA, appointed director of IIIT-H in 2013. Currently, this highly-reputed ICT institute has an enrolment of 1,928 students mentored by 103 faculty.
MIT’s Anil Rana (second left)
Beyond the top 5, Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) has inched up to #6 (#7 in 2021-22) even as RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru, at #7 (6), has ceded a rank. SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, Chennai and Shiv Nadar University, Dadri are jointly ranked #8. Yet the star of this year’s league table is the previously unranked Mahindra University Ecole Centrale School of Engineering, Hyderabad which has debuted at #9. The Top 10 table is completed by BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru (8) jointly ranked #10 with the Hindustan Institute of Technology & Science, Chennai.
“It’s an honour for MIT, Manipal to be ranked among India’s Top 10 private engineering institutions year after year. This is the outcome of our continuous efforts to upgrade curriculums, invest in research and entrepreneurial initiatives, provide contemporary learner-centric infrastructure and experiential learning environments. Moreover, as a constituent college of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, recognised as an Institution of Eminence by the Union education ministry, our students are provided a plethora of opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary research and learning. This institutional culture explains our high scores on the parameters of curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface, placements and infrastructure,” says Cdr. (Dr.) Anil Rana, director, Manipal Institute of Technology, which has an enrolment of 9,552 students, mentored by 653 full-time faculty.
The satisfaction of parachuting onto the EW Top 10 private engineering colleges league table is greater in the hitherto unranked Mahindra University Ecole Centrale School of Engineering, Hyderabad (MUECSE), which has debuted at #9. Promoted in 2014 as Mahindra Ecole Centrale by automobiles major Mahindra Group, the institute was subsumed in 2020 within Mahindra University, established by the Telangana State Private Universities (Establishment & Regulation) Act, 2018. MUECSE boasts academic partnership with the highly-reputed Group of Ecole Centrale (GEC) engineering institutions in France.
“Our Top 10 debut is validation that we are on the right track for realising our objective of establishing a world-class engineering and technology school. Supported by faculty drawn from leading Indian and global institutions, global partnerships and industry-aligned curriculums, our mission is to graduate ‘new age engineers’ ready to quickly transform into future-ready leaders and entrepreneurs trained in next-generation technologies. That’s why our focus is on interdisciplinary curriculums, entrepreneurial projects, disruptive new-age technologies and critical/ creative thinking. You can rest assured that we are constantly upgrading our curriculum and launching study programmes in nexgen technologies such as computational biology, data science, artificial intelligence and power electronics,” says Dr. Yaj Medury, vice chancellor of Mahindra University. An alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, Dr. Medury has rich experience in managing new genre private higher ed institutions as vice chancellor of Bennett University, Greater Noida, Jaypee University of IT, Himachal Pradesh, and VIT University before he was appointed VC of Mahindra University in 2020.
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Mahindra University’s Dr. Yaj Medury (centre)
Further down the 133-strong league table of India’s best private engineering colleges, several institutes have made a great leap forward in the esteem of the informed public. Among them: the Sri Sairam Engineering College, Chennai, promoted to #18 (#84 in 2021-22), Amity School of Engineering and Technology, Noida to #19 (26), Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai to #21 (29), and CMR Institute of Technology, Bengaluru to #25 (40).
Prof. (Dr.) Abhay Bansal, joint head, Amity School of Engineering & Technology, Amity University, Noida (estb.2005), is pleased with the institute’s steady progress to the national Top 20 league table and the school’s second position in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous (215 million) state. “We are proud that your knowledgeable respondents have recognised our consistent effort to provide high-quality engineering education. Since inception, our focus has been on rounded development of students. We ensure they mature into not just excellent engineering professionals and technocrats but are also ethical individuals, with understanding of human values who take pride in their cultural heritage, and are men and women of conviction and action. This emphasis on all-round education combined with a robust research culture and industry-academia partnerships is the secret behind our high scores on all your parameters of engineering excellence,” says Bansal, an alumnus of Bharati Vidyapeeth’s College of Engineering, Pune and Rajasthan University, and former professor at the Institute of Technology & Science (ITS), Ghaziabad, who signed up with Amity University in 2010.
Amity’s Dr. Abhay Bansal (centre)
A highlight of this year’s national league table of India’s best private engineering institutes is that engineering colleges from peninsular India — the states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and the western seaboard state of Maharashtra — dominate it. Tamil Nadu has 32 private engineering colleges ranked among the Top 100; Maharashtra 21 and Karnataka 17. In contrast, the populous states of Uttar Pradesh have 13 and Madhya Pradesh four.
However, it’s pertinent to note that although some engineering colleges are modestly ranked nationally, they are highly ranked in their states, some of whom are more populous than the average European country. For instance, the School of Engineering, The Northcap University, Gurugram, ranked #63 nationally, is ranked #1 in Haryana (pop.28 million). Likewise, Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology, Kochi, Ernakulam (#38) is Kerala’s #1 engineering college and the Sagar Institute of Research & Technology, Bhopal (#41) is #1 in the state of Madhya Pradesh (pop.87 million).
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