Of India’s 5,868 engineering colleges and universities, 3,918 are privately promoted and managed. However only 50 percent of their graduates meet industry standards. Therefore, aspiring engineers would be advised to carefully study the EW league table of India’s best private engineering institutions – Summiya Yasmeen

If India’s large number of 5,868 engineering colleges and universities that certify 1.5 million graduates annually, produced well-educated, highly-qualified engineers, India would have become a developed nation with globally comparable public infrastructure several decades ago. However, the pathetic condition of the overwhelming majority of the country’s roads, ports, bridges, railways, electric power generation and distribution, water supply and waste disposal enterprises etc, is standing testimony to poor-quality engineering is technology education dispensed by India’s engineering institutes.  

Almost a decade ago, the globally-respected New York-based consultancy McKinsey & Co and the Delhi-based recruitment firm Aspiring Minds generated shock waves in India Inc by opining that 75-85 percent of India’s engineering graduates were unemployable in foreign or Indian multinationals. A decade later, the connect between India Inc and the ivory towers of Indian academia hasn’t improved. According to a Times of India report of late last year, of the 1.5 million engineering graduates certified every year, only 45 percent “meet industry standards” and a mere 10 percent are employed. “There is a massive disconnect between academic training and industry demands, leaving millions of graduates unprepared and unemployed,” says the ToI report (28/10).

Against this backdrop, the annual EducationWorld pan-India engineering institutions rankings league tables introduced in 2013, has had to tread warily to differentiate our league tables from other magazines and dailies. Initially, the EW league tables included and ranked the Central-government promoted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs).

But in 2016, your editors resolved to exclude IITs and NITs because these highly-subsidised institutions not only monotonously top all media league tables, but also because they admit a mere 2 percent of the 1.4 million class XII graduates who write the annual IIT Joint Entrance Exam. Instead, in our EW survey of India’s best engineering colleges (and universities) we focus upon evaluating the best among India’s 3,918 private engineering and technology education institutes to enable 98 percent of students who don’t make the cut into IITs/NITs to choose the most locationally and aptitudinally suitable non-government engineering colleges, some of whom are closing the IITs/NITs versus rest gap.

To compile new-age AI-driven EW India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) we commissioned the highly qualified AZ Research Partners Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru. Accordingly, over 100 market research personnel of AZR interviewed 2,100 sample respondents including higher ed faculty, college students and industry representatives countrywide. The 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. The scores awarded by respondents under each parameter were totaled to rank the country’s Top 200 private engineering colleges/institutes inter se.

Except at the very top, this year’s league table of India’s best private engineering institutes has undergone a makeover. While the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS), Pilani, the country’s pioneer private engineering institution established way back in 1946, is ranked India #1 for the third consecutive year, this year’s sample respondents have promoted the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Tamil Nadu, to #2 (#3 in 2024-25) jointly with the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information & Communication Technology, Gandhinagar (#4). The elevation of these two institutions has pushed the low-profile but highly respected previously second-ranked International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad to #3.

Since it was established in 1946 by the legendary businessman-philanthropist G.D. Birla, the founder of the Birla business empire (market capitalisation: Rs.8.5 lakh crore), and conferred deemed university status in 1964, BITS-Pilani has established five campuses equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure in Mohali, Goa, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Dubai with an aggregate enrollment of 18,000 students mentored by 470 faculty. In Indian industry and commerce, it’s commonly accepted that BITS-Pilani is on a par with the best IITs. But curiously in the Union education ministry’s NIRF Rankings 2024, BITS-Pilani is ranked #20 among engineering colleges and #19 among universities.

Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, an alum of IIT-Bombay and Universitat der Bundeswehr, Munich (Germany) and former director of IIT-Delhi, who took charge as Vice Chancellor of BITS-Pilani in 2002, prefers not to comment on this premier engineering university’s NIRF ranking. However, he is not surprised that varying EW sample respondents have ranked BITS-Pilani India’s #1 private engineering institution for the past three years, and this year as well with top scores under eight of the nine EW parameters of engineering education excellence. 

“Among knowledgeable academics and within the students community — every year 215,000 higher secondary school-leavers and college graduates write the BITS-Pilani entrance exam of whom 3,500 are admitted — and in India’s top-ranked companies, it’s common knowledge that BITS-Pilani introduced its integrated workplace experience under its practice schools programmes several decades ago with final year students acquiring hands-on industry experience for up to six months in 600 companies in India and abroad. This ensures our graduates are fully prepared to meaningfully contribute to their employer companies from day one. This explains our highest scores under the parameter of industry placements as also competence of faculty and industry interface. In our campuses equipped with globally comparable infrastructure — as testified by our top score under this parameter also — our students are provided high quality industry-aligned engineering and technology education,” says Rao.

In this year’s Top 10 league table of private engineering colleges, most institutions are ranked a notch or two above their 2024-25 rank. PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore has been promoted to #4 (5), RV College of Engineering, Bengaluru to #5 (#6) jointly ranked with the Manipal Institute of Technology, Karnataka (#5), Mahindra University École Centrale School of Engineering, Hyderabad to #6 (7) tied with the Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala (#7). SSN College of Engineering, Kalavakkam, Chennai and Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida — promoted by IT tech billionaire Shiv Nadar — are ranked #7 (#7) and #8 (#9) respectively. The Top 10 table is completed by Hindustan Institute of Technology & Science, Chennai, ranked #8 (#8), BMS College of Engineering, Bengaluru at #9 (#8) and SASTRA University, Thanjavur at #10 (#11).

Prof. K. N. Subramanya, principal of RV College of Engineering (RVCE), Bengaluru, is pleased that the 62-year-old college awarded top (tied) score under the parameter of infrastructure, is steadily rising up the league table from #7 in 2022-23 to top table this year.

“Steady upward progress in the EW league table is motivating. But on merit, I believe we should be ranked among the Top 3. I attribute our consistently rising reputation to provision of state-of-the-art infrastructure by the management, culture of interdisciplinary research and good reputation in industry which has resulted in a good placements record,” says Subramanya, an alum of Bangalore University and IIT-Madras with over 30 years of teaching, research and consultancy experience, appointed principal of RVCE in 2016.

 Prof. Subramanya takes special pride in in RVCE’s connect with India Inc and believes that the college deserves higher scores for research and industry interface. “RVCE is a pioneer in establishing strong academia-industry connect. We have signed over 100 MOUs and collaborations with globally reputed corporates including Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Intel, IBM, CISCO, Infosys and Bosch among others who welcome our students as interns and faculty for sabbaticals, research and consultancy projects. In RCVE, we have established 28 Centres of Excellence including the RV-Mercedes Benz Centre for Automotive Mechatronics and RV-Bosch Rexroth Centre of Competence in Automation Technologies. As a result, most of our graduates are campus recruited immediately after graduation,” says Subramanya with commendable institutional pride. Currently, RVCE (estb.1963) has 6,143 students mentored by 346 faculty on its muster rolls.

An encouraging marker of improving standards of engineering and technology education is that this year’s league table features the debut of several previously unranked institutions. Among them: RNS Institute of Technology, Bengaluru at #22, Dr. NGP Institute of Technology, Coimbatore at #25, Pillai College of Engineering, Navi Mumbai at #30, Meerut Institute of Engineering & Technology at #54 and Sri Aurobindo Institute of Technology, Indore at #56.

Moreover, it’s important to note that although some colleges are modestly ranked nationally, they are often highly ranked in their host states, some of whom more populous than European countries. For instance, the Heritage Institute of Technology, Kolkata, ranked #33 nationally, is the #1 private engineering college of West Bengal (pop.104 million);  GITAM, Visakhapatnam, ranked India #43 is #1 in Andhra Pradesh (53 million) and Rajagiri School of Engineering and Technology, Kochi, Ernakulam, ranked India #68 is #1 in Kerala (pop.35 million).