CSR-GHRDC Engineering Colleges Survey 2013

The Methodology

“India's Best EngineeringColleges 2013 :How We Arrivedat the Survey Results”

By Aradhana ChangkakotiAsst. Director, GHRDC

&

Shraddha MishraSr. Manager, GHRDC

COMPETITION SUCCESS REVIEW, JULY 2013 1

rating and ranking of Engineering Colleges. Thisquestionnaire is reviewed and edited every yearkeeping in mind the changes being witnessedafter which it has been carefully deliberated,discussed and finalised by a consultative grouprepresenting academia, institutions, industry, aswell our team of experts. Based on this,weightages were assigned.

TRANSPARENCY, RELIABILITY,RESEARCH-BASED METHODOLOGYAND STRONG EMPHASIS ONVALIDATION OF DATA remained the keystrength of the survey.

Both QUANTITATIVE ANDQUALITATIVE FACTORS WITHABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE VALUEASSIGNED TO EACH DATA /UNIT havebeen used in the survey methodology.

“No Perception or Subjective Biashas been allowed to creep in” and we havefocussed strongly on actual data and itsvalidation.

Invitations for participation were sent onlyto those colleges/institutes which met theminimum eligibility criteria, i.e. number ofyears of establishment, duration and numberof streams of Engineering major course (only4-year courses were considered); and thosehaving proper placement data and relatedrecords, etc. out of approximately 3,000 plusor so Engineering Colleges/Institutes existingin India. The participation of the Institutes inthe Survey was voluntary.

As every year, a detailed questionnaire wassent out to al l shortl isted Engineer ingColleges/ Institutes. Out of these, 129 collegeswere finally selected. This year’s survey toowitnessed a significant percentage of theparticipation of the Top Engineering Collegesin India namely IIT-Kharagpur, IIT-Kanpur,IIT-Madras, IIT-BHU, a few NITs andtop-ranked private institutes. Each yearwitnesses minor changes with respect toinstitutes participating in the survey. This year,it was interesting to note that 22 new institutesparticipated over and above the last year’s list.

1. INTRODUCTION

Once again GHRDC has come up with themost comprehensive and rigorous survey ofIndian Engineering Education Sector, CSR-GHRDC Engineering College Survey 2013, whichhas focussed on the actual and visibleperformance of an Institute based on thoroughand objective method of evaluation.

The prime purpose of our survey has alwaysbeen targeted towards raising the standard ofEngineering education in the country and toassess the performance of Engineering Collegesagainst different parameters. In its 5th year ofpublishing, “CSR-GHRDC Best EngineeringColleges Survey 2013” has focussed on key issuesin the context of the changing dynamics of theEngineering education field in India. Through thissurvey, we have once again attempted to revealvital and detailed information for the advantageof all stakeholders concerned, i.e. Engineeringaspirants, recruiters, the participating institutes/colleges and for the policy-makers of our country.GHRDC believes that a survey should beconducted with a purpose and should be basedon proven data and facts. We have followed thisobjective and the methodology has been designedaccordingly. The fundamental belief applied andused in the methodology has been to empowerall the stakeholders, especially the young aspirantsso that they can make the right career choice bychoosing the college which suits them the bestin all respect.

To measure the progress of our participants,we relied on a large number of objectivelydesigned parameters followed by rigorous processof validation through email, phone calls, andsupplementary questions together withextensive validation visits to the participatinginstitutions along the length and breadth of thecountry.

2. METHODOLOGY

As in the past, due care has been given inselecting the parameters and designing thequestionnaire by our team of experts, for the

CSR-GHRDC Engineering Colleges Survey 2013

Some old participants which did not participate in last year’ssurvey also came back to participate this year. At the sametime, 24 participating institutes from the 2012 survey didnot participate leading to changes in the rating and rankingthis year.

Some insti tutes did not complete the datarequired for the survey while a few did not respond to thequeries raised regarding various discrepancies. Whileattempts were made to address them by seekingfurther information and clarification, it was not possibleto do so for all of them as a result of which someinstitutes were not included in the survey results. As aresearch-based institution, it has always been our intentionto encourage new, emerging and potential colleges toparticipate in the survey and accordingly they were alsoinvited.

In view of the fact that GHRDC does not believe in thephilosophy of a perception-based survey results, in theabsence of data from other institutes, including some ofIITs, they have not been rated or ranked.

GHRDC is thankful to all the participating Institutes fortheir overwhelming response and continued support forhelping us in carrying out the survey successfully for thelast 5 years. We would once again like to fully acknowledgeand appreciate all participating Engineering Colleges forproviding detailed data and information required for thesurvey.

PARAMETERS, FACTORS & WEIGHTAGE

Table 1: It provides a detailed classification of the parameters and sub-parametersused in the evaluation process, along with their respective weightage.

Parameters Factors/Data / Supporting Evidence Weightage(Quantitative and Qualitative) (%)

INFRASTRUCTURE

l Physical Built-up area, number of classrooms, hostel on campus/percentage of students provided accommodation, lab facilitiesoffered to each branch under engineering, layout plan, physicalverification, etc. 22.9%

l Academic Library records, engineering-related books, No. of engineering-relatedbooks added, national & international journals, publications, e-journals,No. of LCD projectors, computing facilities in classrooms, etc

FACULTY, RESEARCH & CONSULTANCY

l Faculty, Research, Composition of faculty & output—full-time & visiting faculty, ratioConsultancy, Publications of student & faculty, research & consultancy, EDP & other programmes,& EDP percentage of Ph.D., industry experience of faculty, No. of publications /

research papers (books, working papers, etc.) and conferences/ seminars,total number of programmes offered by the college, competencybuilding & soft skills, number of patents applied & number ofpatents approved, etc. 35.3%

ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES

l Admission, Curriculum, Entrance test, number of students admitted against approved seats,Delivery Systems tuition fees, percent of curriculum devoted to core/ elective/

project work, course designed and offered, course timetable,college records, etc. 14.7%

PLACEMENT

l Placement Industry Interface Offer letters, recruiter details, final placement, average domestic/& USP international salary, cost of education/ return against, alumni, etc. 27.1%

2 COMPETITION SUCCESS REVIEW, JULY 2013

3. PARAMETERS

In order to establish the criteria for filtering the final listof institutions, extensive secondary research was carried out.Key factors and parameters used for evaluating and ratingwere Infrastructure (both physical and academic), Faculty,Research, Consultancy, Publications & ExecutiveDevelopment Programme, Admission, Curriculum, DeliverySystems, Placement and Industry Interface.

For a more rigorous quantitative and qualitative analysisand assessment, the parameters were further divided into anumber of sub-parameters. The breaking up of eachparameter and their scores was done with an aim to indicatethe significance given to aspects like quality of students andfaculty, curriculum, quality of infrastructure and other keyresources.

Our survey methodology is designed so as to enable us tocollect various other important information with respect tolibrary data, research and publications, corporate training,industry interaction, student admission systems, pedagogyand curriculum design, campus specialisations, income andexpenditure of the institute, faculty profiles, student supportfacilities, international linkages, brand-building, consultingand overall growth of institute—all were given dueconsiderations.

An institute’s intellectual competence is one of the mostcritical factors that needs to be taken into account, which

CSR-GHRDC Engineering Colleges Survey 2013

COMPETITION SUCCESS REVIEW, JULY 2013 3

The GHRDC core team is headed by Ms. Mekhla Sinha (Executive Director), and a group of professionals—Ms. Aradhana Changkakoti (Asst. Director-Operations), Ms. Anju Anupam (Chief Manager-Operations),Mr. Niraj Dushyant (Sr. Manager-Project), Ms. Shraddha Mishra (Sr. Manager), Ms. Neha Kapoor (Asst.Manager - HR), Mr. Dilip Shankar Gupta (Manager-Data & Statistics), Ms. K. Saraswati (Data Operator),Mr. Srinath Mahto (Office Assistant), Mr. Gurdeep Singh (In Charge – Travel and Transport Support) andteam of project staff research executives/analysts and support staff.

for example, includes knowledge of designing and deliveryof latest courses and cur riculum, entrepreneurshipdevelopment, usage of latest teaching techniques, research,competence of conducting and organising executivedevelopment programmes, innovations, consultancy, etc. Theindustry today puts a huge amount of emphasis on peopleand soft skills; hence this is one of the factors which isgiven due weightage to evaluate the qualitative value of thecollege and the kind of effort being made in this area.

4. VALIDATION

With an underlying philosophy of “seeing is believing”,GHRDC's emphasis on validation visits to the participatinginstitutes continued with the same rigour—each year wemake an attempt to not only visit the old participants, butalso to get even the new ones added in the survey. Thisyear too, GHRDC Research and Validation teams visitedthe institutes and physically verified the data and had directinteraction with the Principal /Directors, Deans, Facultymembers and a randomly selected sample of students. Thisyearly exercise not only helps in giving strength to the survey,but also helps in tracking the overall performance of theinstitutes over the last 5 years and in measuring qualitativevalue of an institute.

Nearly, 40 percent of the participating institutes werevisited by our research and validation teams, while otherswere contacted through phone and email to further verifytheir data. Some inputs from the institutes’ website werealso taken in order to verify the information given by theEngineering Colleges. It is worth mentioning here that mostparticipating institutions were remarkably responsive and

transparent in providing information backed by documentaryevidence wherever we required, thus making the process ofvalidation smooth, less time-consuming and reliable.

5. SURVEY RESULTS

All the collected and verified data was further analysedagainst given factors and weightages to arrive at the ratingand ranking of all participating Engineering Colleges/Institutes in India. Different institutes fall in different layersand thus the categorisation was done into several ratinggroups, which does help the institutes to know whichcategory they belong to.

Accordingly, the result of the ranking of EngineeringColleges was divided into different categories, i.e. Institutesdefined as

1. “Top Leading Engineering Colleges of SuperExcellence” >=80% points.

2. “Top Engineering Colleges of Super Excellence”having secured between >=65% to <80% points.

3. “Top Engineering Colleges of Excellence”' havingsecured >=50% to <65% points.

4. “Top Promising Engineering College of Excellence”having secured >=40% to <50% points.

5. “Potential Engineering Colleges” having secured <40%points out of the total points used for ranking.

We also analysed and ranked the top Institutes by theRegion, State, Government and Private Colleges and againstseparate parameters, i.e., by Faculty, by Placement and bypercentage of Full-Time Faculty with Ph.D., etc., details ofwhich are given in the tables along with rating and rankingof Engineering College Survey Results 2013.