Page 73 - EducationWorld May 2021

BITS-Pilani’s Dr. Souvik Bhattacharyya (foreground centre left): infrastructure modernisation drive

disrupted. The academic year which usually begins in private engineering colleges, some of which are rapidly
August was postponed to October, campus placements of closing the IITs/NITs versus the rest gap.
graduating batches of 2020 were sharply down, and most To compile the EW India Private Engineering Insti-
state governments cancelled exams for all intermediate tutes Rankings (EWIPEIR) 2021-22, market researchers
semester students with examinations held only for final of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research
semester students. Yet, despite these delays and disrup- Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), our trusted partner ab initio
tions, most engineering college managements responded — which also conducts our pioneer annual Education-
creatively to the pandemic challenge. Teaching-learning World India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India
moved online, on Zoom, YouTube, etc as did laboratory Preschool Rankings (2010) — interviewed 1,018 engi-
classes. Examinations, internships and placements also neering college faculty, 1,126 final year students and 379
went virtual with proctored online tests and video inter- industry representatives countrywide.
views replacing physical interaction. These sample respondents were persuaded to rate en-
Nevertheless, despite the Covid-19 pandemic hugely gineering institutes (of whom they had sufficient knowl-
disrupting the academic calendar of higher education in- edge) on nine parameters of excellence — faculty compe-
stitutions, we have persisted with our annual exercise of tence, placement, research and innovation, curriculum
rating and ranking the country’s best private engineering and pedagogy (digital readiness), industry interface,
colleges. Since 2016, EducationWorld has been excluding value for money, infrastructure, faculty welfare, leader-
the heavily subsidised and routinely top-ranked Indian ship and governance. The scores awarded by respondents
Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of under each parameter were totaled to rank the country’s
Technology (NITs), preferring to evaluate and rank the Top 100 private engineering colleges/institutes inter se.
country’s Top 100 private engineering colleges to enable Low-profile institutions assessed by less than 25 respon-
98 percent of students who don’t make it into the top 2 dents are not ranked.
percent of the 635,000 school-leavers who write the IIT/ For the sixth year in succession C fore’s
NIT Joint Entrance Exam. Our focus is on aiding and en- knowledgeable respondents have voted the Birla
abling this 98 percent to choose the most suitable among Institute of Technology and Science (BITS),

MAY 2021 EDUCATIONWORLD 73