Recently I ranked engineering colleges in India based on the student quality and other parameters, and most of these rankings were also supported by a latest article in “Current Science”. Current Science is fortnightly research journal published by Indian Academy of Sciences since 1932. A recent article titled “Ranking of Indian engineering and technological institutes for their research performance during 1999–2008” in Current Science gives the ranking of engineering colleges based on research.I really appreciate the efforts made by authors for giving a new parameter for ranking engineering colleges. On same time have concerns over ranking of Anna University (ranked 9) and College of Engineering Anna University (ranked 16), as they both should represent only one institute, instead of two. Similarly Institute of Chemical technology (Ranked 13) is a very specialized college offering courses related to Chemical engineering. And also, IISc offers only Master and PhD degrees.
When there is a scope of some relaxation over the span of course and engineering studies for ranking, few very good research institutes that conduct major technological and Biological research (involving technology) in India, would also have been include. To name few are Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), and National Center for Biological Research (NCBS). Because when it comes to research India has few very specialized centers and Engineering studies are still well separated from research.
The list of top thirty colleges based on some research index is below.
| Rank | Institute |
|---|---|
| 1 | IISc, Bangalore |
| 2 | IIT Kanpur |
| 3 | IIT Bombay |
| 4 | IIT Kharagpur |
| 5 | IIT Delhi |
| 6 | Jadavpur University |
| 7 | IIT Madras |
| 8 | IIT Roorkee |
| 9 | Anna University |
| 10 | IIT Guwahati |
| 11 | Cochin University of Science and Technology |
| 12 | BITS, Pilani |
| 13 | Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai |
| 14 | IT BHU, Varanasi |
| 15 | Bengal Engineering and Science University, Howrah |
| 16 | College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai |
| 17 | Harcourt Butler Institute of Technology, Kanpur |
| 18 | Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad |
| 19 | Maulana Azad NIT, Bhopal |
| 20 | NIT/REC, Rourkela |
| 21 | NIT/REC, Warangal |
| 22 | NIT/REC, Trichy |
| 23 | Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sangrur |
| 24 | PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore |
| 25 | NIT, Jamshedpur |
| 26 | Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala |
| 27 | Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi |
| 28 | Delhi College of Engineering, New Delhi |
| 29 | BIT, Mesra |
| 30 | S.J. College of Engineering, Mysore |
When it comes to research, India has few very specialized centers and Engineering studies are still well separated from research. Student preference may differ for course to course. A student going for Bachelor or Master of Engineering may not prefer this list because for them placement matters more than research. And placements depend on student quality and that changes the whole ranking.
I think research can be a good parameter for ranking engineering colleges in India but can not be used as only ranking as criteria, because of overlap in type colleges to be considered for ranking. Few are very specialized research centers and don’t offer undergrad studies (like IISc) and few are specialized to a single field (like Indian Institute of Chemical Technology).
Finally to conclude that research is a nice parameter for ranking engineering institutes in future but can not be treated as only criteria. I rally appreciate the authors contributing in giving a new direction to ranking engineering colleges in India. I hope in future we can see few more criteria coming up like Research project and funding and a specialized ranking based on departments. It is really a great direction to see some solid ranking in future.
To read the complete article please click on the tile of paper.