With the majority of graduates of the country’s 4,500 engineering colleges and universities continuing to teach decades-old curriculums, pain is in the offing for their 1.5 million graduates per year. However top-ranked private engineering universites offer hope

Although contemporary India often boasts about having established an officially estimated 4,500 engineering higher education institutions — 700 promoted by the Central and state governments and 3,600 by private edupreneurs — which certify 1.5 million graduates annually, the overwhelming majority of them are in bad shape and need urgent reform and upgrade.

Almost a decade ago the globally-respected New York-based consultancy McKinsey & Co and the Delhi-based recruitment firm Aspiring Minds generated shock waves in India Inc by opining that 75-85 percent of engineering graduates were unemployable in foreign or Indian multinationals. A decade later, the connect between India Inc and the ivory towers of Indian academia is still a bridge too far. According to a Times of India report of late last year, of the 1.5 million engineering graduates certified every year, only 45 percent “meet industry standards” and a mere 10 percent are employed. “There is a massive disconnect between academic training and industry demands, leaving millions of graduates unprepared and unemployed,” says the ToI report (28/10).

Ab initio since EducationWorld was launched 25 years ago, your editors have frequently alerted laidback academics in the country’s HEIs (higher education institutions) about academy-industry misalignment which has extracted — and evidently continues to extract — a heavy price from India’s huge youth population recklessly proclaimed as a demographic dividend. However India Inc leaders protected from global competition by high tariff walls and a large captive domestic market have turned a deaf ear (see Petty-minded density).

Ditto India’s engineering colleges and universities where over-paid academics continue to teach decades-old curriculums. Unsurprisingly, 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 economy — agriculture, industry, government and services — is rock-bottom by international standards.

Manufacturing/industry contributes a mere 15 percent of annual GDP cf. 38 percent in China. Unsurprisingly India’s HEIs, especially engineering universities, haven’t been able to ideate and innovate even one disruptive, killer product/service such as the smartphone, internet, jet engine etc for the past 77 years since independence. Or even resolve mundane domestic problems such as preventing stubble burning causing toxic air pollution, cleansing river waters, and unlocking urban traffic gridlocks.

Moreover with rapid AI advancements and associated technologies disrupting industry and services, there’s additional pain in the offing for the 1.5 million graduates streaming out of engineering institutions every year. According to A.R. Ramesh, CEO of Teamlease Degree Apprenticeship, a division of the Gujarat-based Teamlease Skills University, the number of readily employable graduates of India’s 4,500 engineering colleges and universities is likely to decline from 45 percent currently to 10-15 percent in the near future. Media reports indicate that up to 40-45 percent graduates of even the best of India’s 23 globally famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) are struggling to land jobs commensurate with remuneration expectation.

Aware of the deep divide between the academy and industry and to contribute towards bridging it, in 2013, your editors introduced the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) with the objective of enabling parents and students to shortlist, if not select, the country’s most suitable higher education institutions — public and private universities according to subject specialisation; undergrad Arts, Science and Commerce Colleges; B-schools and higher ed institutes in other categories.

After a few years of ranking government-promoted IIT and NITs that were dominating the EW — and all other media — league tables, and also because they admit a mere 2-3 percent of 1.2-1.5 million aspiring engineers who write the annual Joint Entrance Exam, in 2016 your editors took the decision to eliminate IITs & NITs from the annual EWIHER and rank only private engineering institutions. Since then we have been ranking private engineering colleges/institutions and private engineering universities separately, even though some private engineering institutions awarded deemed university status are listed in both league tables.

Against this backdrop, it’s unsurprising that for the past three years the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, generously endowed by G.D. Birla (1894-1983) founder of the still-going-strong Birla business empire (market valuation: Rs. 8.5 lakh crore), has been ranked India’s #1 private engineering and technology university.

Since it was registered in 1946 and conferred deemed university status in 1964, BITS-Pilani has established five campuses equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure in Mohali, Goa, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Dubai with an aggregate enrollment of 18,000 students mentored by 470 faculty. Prominent alumni include Sanjay Mehrotra (co-founder Sansdisk and CEO Micron Technology); Sabir Bhatia (co-founder Hotmail); Baba Kalyani (promoter Bharat Forge); Hari Menon (Co-founder & CEO Big Basket) and Dr. Govind Rangarajan (Director Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore). In Indian industry and commerce it’s commonly accepted that BITS-Pilani is on a par with the best IITs. However in the Union education ministry’s NIRF Rankings 2024, BITS-Pilani is ranked #20 among engineering colleges and #19 among universities.

The low rank awarded to BITS-Pilani in NIRF rankings has been repeatedly criticised by your editors (NB. Neither BITS-Pilani nor the tight-fisted Birla Group advertise in EW) as indicative of flawed NIRF methodology based on institutional self-assessment. On March 27, 2025, in response to a PIL (public interest litigation) writ, the Madurai Bench of the Madras high court issued a stay order on the ministry publishing NIRF 2025. The PIL alleged “data manipulation and lack of transparency in the NIRF ranking process”.

Prof. V. Ramgopal Rao, an alum of IIT-Bombay and Universitat der Bundeswehr, Munich (Germany) and former director of IIT-Delhi, who took charge as Vice Chancellor of BITS-Pilani which has an aggregate 18,000 students mentored by 470 faculty in 2002, prefers not to comment on this premier engineering university’s NIRF ranking. However he is not surprised that varying EW sample respondents have ranked BITS-Pilani India’s #1 private engineering university for the past three years, and this year as well with top scores under eight of the 10 EW parameters of higher education excellence.

“Among knowledgeable academics and within the students community — every year 215,000 higher secondary school-leavers and college graduates write the BITS-Pilani entrance exam of whom 3,500 are admitted — and in India’s top-ranked companies, it’s common knowledge that BITS-Pilani introduced its integrated workplace experience under its practice schools programmes over five decades ago with final year students acquiring hands-on industry experience for up to six months in 600 companies in India and abroad. This ensures our graduates are fully prepared to meaningfully contribute to their employer companies from day one. This explains our highest scores under the parameter of industry placements as also competence of faculty and research and innovation. In our campuses equipped with globally comparable infrastructure — as testified by our top score under this parameter also — our students are provided high quality industry-aligned engineering and technology education,” says Rao.

BITS-Pilani is followed by the Vellore Institute of Technology (never responsive to EW interview requests) which has retained its #2 rank in the 2025-26 EW league table of India’s most admired private engineering universities. The low-profile but well-reputed Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala which was jointly ranked #2 in 2024-25 is ranked #3 this year followed by IIIT, Hyderabad at #4 (3) and the well-marketed Lovely Professional University (LPU), Phagwara (Punjab) promoted to top table with #5 (6) ranking shared with the fast rising BML Munjal University, Gurugram.

“LPU’s steady rise in the EW rankings from #8 in 2023-24 to #6 in 2024-25 and #5 this year validates sustained effort to re-imagine experiential STEM education,” says Aman Mittal, an alum of Thapar Institute of Engineering, Patiala and Southampton (UK) universities and Vice President of LPU (estb.2006) which has 35,000 students from 50 countries mentored by 3,800 faculty on its muster rolls.

“In light of the dawn of the AI age and disruptive technologies, the time has come for a pedagogy revolution in Indian higher education. In LPU we are implementing radical pedagogies under which much of students’ learning happens outside classrooms through acquisition of industry applicable skills. LPU students are actively working in labs and shopfloors, learning high productivity skills supplemented with classroom instruction. This new system is working wonders. In its annual report 2023-24, the Office of the Controller General of Patents & Design ranked LPU #1 countrywide for the number of patent applications — 1,418 — from academic institutions and universities. Our new curriculums and focus on research and innovation is resonating with Indian industry. This year one of our graduates was hired on campus with a starting pay package of Rs.2.5 crore and another with Rs.1 crore,” says Mittal.

Beyond top table, other private engineering universities ranked among the Top 10 are SRM Institute of Science & Technology, Chennai #6 (6); Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of ICT, Gandhinagar, Gujarat #7 (4); SASTRA University, Thanjavur #8 (7); Birla Institute, Mesra #9 (7) and Hindustan Institute of Technology & Science, Chennai #10 (8).

Beyond the Top 10, most institutions are ranked a notch or two below their 2024-25 rank in this year’s EW league table of 40 sufficiently well-known private engineering and technology universities.

The sole exception is the low-profile but supremely ambitious Plaksha University, Mohali promoted to #19 (20). Plaksha U which announced the launch of a new School of AI & Computer Science supported by the Harish & Bina Shah Foundation in February, needs perhaps to take a leaf out of the marketing and brand promotion strategy of the top-ranked multidisciplinary Amity University, which within two decades since it was established has acquired a global profile and reputation.

Also read: EWIHER Top 400 Universities Rankings 2025-26