The elite Indian Institutes of Technology remain the top performing technology institutes in India, a survey by IDC for Dataquest magazine finds.
However the government's rush to open new IITs or upgrade Regional Engineering Colleges , has not visibly improved quality, it seems. Patents won or doctora programmes available are embarassingly small in number.
IT Kharagpur tops the list for the third successive year, followed by the five other IITs -- Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati, in the 5th IDC-Dataquest T-School 2009 Survey of 111 engineering colleges across the country. IIIT (also called Triple I T) Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, NIT Surathkal and IT BHU Varanasi took the other positions in the Top 10. Interestingly, IIIT Hyderabad is the youngest T-School, set up in 1998, in the Top 10 list. IIT Bombay did not participate.
While IIT Kharagpur scored highest on HR perception, IIT Delhi ranked highest on placement records. The HR perception score is based on how recruiters rate each college during their campus visits. Placement score is based on percentage of students placed, number of companies visiting campuses as well as the maximum and average salary offered per annum.
NITs advance
Seven NITs, earlier called Regional Engineering Colleges, made it to the Top 30 T-Schools list compared to only four in 2007-08 as a result of good placement track record and a favorable HR response. No wonder, the HRD Ministry is proposing to convert some of the NITs into IITs.
The link between academia and industry strengthened as institutes like IIIT Hyderabad engaged with companies such as Amazon, Google, Yahoo, Cisco and IBM for R&D, contributing to its revenue and prestige. The government sector and autonomous organizations such as DRDO, DRDL, ISRO, BEL continued their research funding and their joint research projects.
“Even though the academic environment is not impacted by the slowdown, the T-Schools need to enrich academic standards by collaborating with industry and undertaking research in the required fields,” said Ibrahim Ahmad, Group Editor of Dataquest, quoting the example of Coimbatore-based PSG College of Technology that was No. 1 on ‘Industry Interface’ due to its strong on industry collaboration.
PSG College of Technology has several Centers of Excellence, including the Siemens Center of Excellence in Automation, Rockwell Center, and Infineon Embedded Systems Laboratory conducting cutting edge research at the institute. Other T-Schools with high level Industry interface included: NIT Surathkal, IIT Kanpur, IIT Delhi and IIT Roorkee.
Surprisingly, the average number of research papers published by each T-School dropped 10% to 145 with only one in three T-schools filing patents in the last 2 years. Among these T-Schools, the number of patents obtained was 2.7 patents per T-School last year.
Even with the Government enhancing the number of IITs to 15 and upgrading all Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) to National Institutes of Technology (NITs), only 2 out of 3 T-Schools offered doctoral programs.
Thin in doctoral programmes
About 152 students were pursuing doctoral programs in each T-School offering doctoral programs.
The IT infrastructure improved across most engineering colleges. In 2008-09, 79% of the colleges provided Internet access to students in the hostels, as compared to 74% last year. About two out of three surveyed T-Schools were Wi-Fi enabled. Four out of five T-Schools had access to e-books and e-journals, and adopted electronic standards for filing patents.
Table of IDC-Dataquest Top 20 T-Schools
Rank / Name of T School / City/ Overall Score 1 IIT Kharagpur Kharagpur 81.92
2 IIT Delhi New Delhi 78.49
3 IIT Madras Chennai 78.41
4 IIT Kanpur Kanpur 77.12
5 IIT Roorkee Roorkee 72.73
6 IIT Guwahati Guwahati 72.41
7 IIIT Hyderabad Hyderabad 69.27
8 BITS Pilani Pilani 68.89
9 NIT Surathkal Surathkal 64.83
10 Institute of Technology, BHU Varanasi 63.84
11 NIT Warangal Warangal 62.98
12 Delhi Technological University (DCE) New Delhi 62.88
13 Birla Institute of Technology Mesra Ranchi 62.12
14 IIIT Allahabad Allahabad 61.45
15 NIT TiruchirapalliI Tiruchirapalli 57.62
16 NIT Calicut Calicut 57.59
17 Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology New Delhi 57.22
18 Anna University Chennai 54.99
19 Jadavpur University Kolkata 54.27
20 Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology Gandhinagar 53.23
The detailed report is available on http://dqindia.ciol.com/
Dec 30 2009