Page 86 - EW may 2026

Cover Story

INDIA’S TOP 250

PRIVATE ENGINEERING COLLEGES

A significant proportion of graduates certified by India’s
5,868 engineering colleges enter the jobs market without
adequate industry skills. Therefore, it’s important for
school leavers aspiring for technical higher education to
carefully choose the most suitable engineering colleges
providing latter-day complex workplace skills

Paromita Sengupta

I universities certify and graduate 1.5 million condition of the country’s public infrastructure including

NDIA’S 5,868 ENGINEERING COLLEGES AND
roads, bridges, railways, etc which is neither robustly built
young hopefuls annually — one of the larg-
nor maintained.
est cohorts of technical talent in the world.
Against this backdrop, the annual EducationWorld
Yet, a significant proportion of these certified
pan-India engineering institutions rankings league tables
graduates enter the jobs market without the
aspiring for engineering education to carefully choose the
skills industry needs. According to the Un-
stop Graduate Employment Report 2025, 83 were introduced way back in 2013 to enable school-leavers
most suitable engineering colleges/universities. Initially,
percent of engineering graduates leave college without a the EW league tables included and ranked the Central-
job or internship offer. A more recent 2026 report of the government promoted Indian Institutes of Technology
Delhi-based recruitment firm Aspiring Minds found that (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). But
while 92 percent of India’s engineering students can cor- in 2016, your editors resolved to exclude IITs and NITs
rectly explain technical concepts in MCQ format, only 38 because these institutions not only routinely top all media
percent could partially write the relevant software code, league tables, but also because they admit a mere 2 percent
and a mere 4.4 percent could produce a fully working, ef- of the 1.4 million class XII graduates who write the annual
ficient software program. IIT Joint Entrance Exam.
The alarming unemployability of India’s engineering Therefore, in our EW survey of India’s best engineering
graduates apart, the gap between engineering education colleges (and universities), we focus upon evaluating the
and workplace readiness explains why the country’s 5,868 best among private engineering and technology education
engineering colleges and universities have failed to pro- institutes to enable 98 percent of students who don’t make
duce any globally game-changing product/service such as the cut into IITs/NITs to choose the most locationally and
the internet or smartphone. It also explains the pathetic aptitudinally suitable non-government engineering col-

86 EDUCATIONWORLD MAY 2026