Page 56 - EW May 2023_Neat

Cover Story EW India Private University Rankings 2023-24

INDIA'S BEST Private Engineering leavers, and secondly because they
routinely top the league tables of all
media publications as also rankings
& Technology Universities published by government. Therefore
right from the start we have omitted
the IITs and NITs from the annual
EWIHER. Our prime objective is
In this issue we have rated and ranked 36 private to aid and enable the remainder 98
engineering and technology universities which provide percent who don’t make it into the
superior quality education and have been awarded deemed prized IITs and NITs to make an
informed choice of an engineering
university status HEI.
In our previous issue (April) we
ranked the country’s most respected
engineering colleges which admit
school-leavers into undergraduate
study programmes. In this issue, we
have rated and ranked 36 private
engineering universities. These insti-
tutions provide superior quality en-
gineering and technology education
and have been awarded ‘deemed-to-
be-university’ aka deemed university
status, empowered to award their
own degrees and diplomas.
On the other hand, undergrad
colleges are obliged to award degrees
of the universities to which they are
affiliated, although autonomous
public and private colleges are also
permitted to inscribe their names
on university degrees. However
unlike public (government) univer-
BITS-Pilani's Prof. Ramgopal Rao (centre): IITs parity sities, deemed universities are not
permitted to affiliate any colleges.
n all assessments about the ment and private engineering col- Nor are they permitted to describe
growth and development poten- leges — some of the latter grudgingly themselves as universities simplic-
tial of Indian industry and emer- designated ‘deemed’ universities for iter. They are obligated to use the
Igence of India as a superpower the superior education they provide. word ‘deemed’ and until recently the
of the 21st century, the country’s In- And of these other engineering and elongated ‘deemed-to-be-university’
dian Institutes of Technology (IITs) technology higher education institu- in their titles.
and National Institutes of Technol- tions (HEIs), the privately promoted These petty slights dictated by
ogy (NITs) are given pride of place. constitute a clear majority. UGC babus rankle. For instance,
But the reality is that the country’s That’s why when the sui generis for a brief while when the often
23 IITs and 31 NITs admit only EducationWorld India Higher Edu- top-ranked Manipal Academy
32,000 school-leavers per year, i.e, 2 cation Rankings (EWIHER) were of Higher Education (MAHE,
percent of the 1.6 million who write conceptualised and introduced in estb.1953), conferred deemed univer-
their JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) fol- 2013, we have awarded pride of place sity status in 1993, started describing
lowed by the IIT Advance exams — to private engineering colleges and itself as Manipal University without
widely regarded the world’s toughest universities which are separately proclaiming its deemed status, it
higher education entrance exams. rated and ranked. Indeed, IITs and was censured by UGC. Since then it
The remaining 1.28 million school- NITs are deliberately excluded has reverted to describing itself as
leavers who opt for engineering and from our league tables. Firstly, MAHE although to all intents and
technology education are absorbed because they admit a very small purposes it functions as an autono-
by the country’s 3,415 other govern- and top-ranked minority of school mous private university.

56 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2023