Ranking of Engineering Colleges/Institutes in India based on Research

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	BITS, 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.