9 technical institutions win awards in seventh edition of AICTE-CII Survey of Industry-Linked Technical Institutes
9 awards in degree category; southern and western institutes dominate again
New Delhi Institute of Management wins management award for second time
Sona College of Technology wins two awards
Thiagarajar Polytechnic College wins lone award in Diploma category once again
Vivekanand Education Society’s College of Pharmacy wins maiden award
The results of the seventh edition of AICTE-CII Survey of Top Industry-Linked Technical Institutes 2018 were announced at the CII Education Summit in New Delhi on Friday. Total 10 awards were given in nine categories, which included 9 degree-level and 1 diploma level awards. In the degree category, there were six awards in engineering, one in management and two in pharmaceutical category. The management award was won for the second consecutive year by the New Delhi Institute of Management.
Degree institutes, more than 10 years old, which were winners of engineering awards were Vivekanand Education Society's College of Pharmacy which won the first award sponsored by Cadila Pharmaceutical in pharma category; the second award in this category, also sponsored by Cadila Pharmaceuticals, was won by the Bombay College of Pharmacy which has been a three times winner of this award in the past.
First prize in mechanical engineering was won by the College of Engineering Pune which has won this award seven times in the survey since its inception in 2012. Sona College of Technology won the second prize in mechanical engineering and also one for chemical engineering. Sri Sai Ram Engineering College won the award for electrical engineering while it had won for computer & IT engineering last year. Walchand Engineering College won the civil engineering award while the New Delhi Institute of Management won the management award for the second time in a row.
Among diploma institutes, Thiagarajar Polytechnic College was yet again the lone winner and it won the award for mechanical engineering this time while last year it was for chemical engineering.
The seventh edition of IndPact survey saw a consolidation in the new methodology of the survey which was introduced in 2017. Instead of beginning with seeking data from institutes on their industry linkages, which invariably results in most good institutes staying away from the process and not providing any data, from 2017, AICTE decided to mandatorily collect some basic data on industry linkages from all institutes at the time of the approval process. Institutes were therefore required to complete a Short Survey before being able to download their approval letters from the AICTE web portal. This led to basic data from more than 9500 technical institutes which formed the basis of the AICTE – CII Survey and from which more than 3500 institutes were invited to participate in the Full Survey. Total 755 entries were received in the Full Survey.
However, within the Full Survey, the trend of public-funded technical institutes -- with good infrastructure, good number of students, and even good linkages with industry – staying away from the survey continued this year as well.
Institutes which submitted their entries in the Full Survey were mostly private institutes, from tier II and tier III cities. The top ones among these are doing good work with industry.
Among the institutes which participated in the Full Survey, the number of those which have in-depth linkages with industry, which do some meaningful research with them and go beyond superficial MOUs, is very small.
The number of institutes which had a consolidated score of more than 60, out of 100, was just five. Those with score of more than 55 was 21.
Considering the low number of institutes with high scores, the threshold for platinum (high industry linkages) category was kept at only 30. Institutes with score of 10 and below were in the silver (low) category. In between were gold (medium) category. Given this classification, there were roughly 20 percent institutes (145) in platinum category; 40 percent (302) in gold category and 40 percent (307) in silver category. While the percentage of institutes in platinum category was more or less in keeping with the trend in previous years, the percentage of institutes in silver category increased substantially this year.
This ratio in previous years used to be in the range of 18 percent platinum, 60 percent gold and 22 percent silver.
Initiated in 2012 by CII and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the IndPact Survey is an objective source of information with the core being the industry-academia collaboration that exists.