Page 56 - EW April 2025

Cover Story EW India Private University Rankings 2025-26

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INDIAS TOP-RANKED PRIVATE ENGINEERING

& TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITIES

which has extracted — and evidently
continues to extract — a heavy price
from India’s huge youth population
recklessly proclaimed as a demo-
graphic dividend. However India Inc
leaders protected from global compe-
tition by high tariff walls and a large
captive domestic market have turned
a deaf ear (see CII postscript).
Ditto India’s engineering col-
leges and universities where over-
paid academics continue to teach
decades-old curriculums. Unsur-
prisingly, not only are graduation
certificates of most of the country’s
45,000 undergrad colleges and 1,168
universities rarely respected by India
Inc, productivity in all sectors of the
BITS-Pilani VC Prof. Ramgopal Rao: #1 four years consecutively economy — agriculture, industry,
government and services — is rock-
With the majority of graduates of the country’s 4,500 bottom by international standards.
engineering colleges and universities continuing to teach Manufacturing/industry contrib-
decades-old curriculums, pain is in the offing for their 1.5 utes a mere 15 percent of annual
GDP cf. 38 percent in China. Unsur-
million graduates per year. However top-ranked private prisingly India’s HEIs, especially en-
engineering universites offer hope gineering universities, haven’t been
able to ideate and innovate even one
lthough contemporary dian multinationals. A decade later, disruptive, killer product/service
India often boasts about the connect between India Inc and such as the smartphone, internet,
having established an the ivory towers of Indian academia jet engine etc for the past 77 years
Aofficially estimated 4,500 is still a bridge too far. According to since independence. Or even resolve
engineering higher education institu- a Times of India report of late last mundane domestic problems such as
tions — 700 promoted by the Central year, of the 1.5 million engineering preventing stubble burning causing
and state governments and 3,600 by graduates certified every year, only toxic air pollution, cleansing river
private edupreneurs — which certify 45 percent “meet industry standards” waters, and unlocking urban traffic
1.5 million graduates annually, the and a mere 10 percent are employed. gridlocks.
overwhelming majority of them are “There is a massive disconnect Moreover with rapid AI advance-
in bad shape and need urgent reform between academic training and ments and associated technologies
and upgrade. industry demands, leaving millions disrupting industry and services,
Almost a decade ago the globally- of graduates unprepared and unem- there’s additional pain in the offing
respected New York-based con- ployed,” says the ToI report (28/10). for the 1.5 million graduates stream-
sultancy McKinsey & Co and the Ab initio since EducationWorld ing out of engineering institu-
Delhi-based recruitment firm Aspir- was launched 25 years ago, your edi- tions every year. According to A.R.
ing Minds generated shock waves tors have frequently alerted laidback Ramesh, CEO of Teamlease Degree
in India Inc by opining that 75-85 academics in the country’s HEIs Apprenticeship, a division of the
percent of engineering graduates (higher education institutions) about Gujarat-based Teamlease Skills Uni-
were unemployable in foreign or In- academy-industry misalignment versity, the number of readily em-

56 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2025