India’s Best Colleges | 30 Private engineering colleges in India

New Delhi: At a top private engineering college, attendance is not mandatory. That’s right, you actually don’t have to attend classes.

The responsibility, decision-making and empowerment begin on Day 1. Students, right from the first year, have to prepare their own timetable, and in all probability (also taught at BITS), no two students have the same time table. They have to select their own professors. By the second year, they start selecting their own electives.

An important feature is the dual degree system at BITS, because of which a student leaves college with a master’s degree in a pure science or economics or another subject, along with an engineering degree. This system depends on merit alone.

Top 30 Private engineering colleges in India

One feature at BITS, which really sets it apart from any other college, is that the institute gives you the option of attending college; attendance isn’t compulsory, which the students can sometimes interpret in the wrong way.

“We don’t have classes.” This is how student Rishabh Kaul, 19, describes studies at BITS Pilani in Rajasthan. He will graduate with a double degree—economics and civil engineering—in 2010.

Freedom to set their own timetable, on-the-job exposure, training in soft skills and regular curriculum upgrade—that’s how top-tier engineering colleges train students today. And that’s how they say they manage to stay on top.

“We have had boundary-less careers training in BITS Pilani for years. There are some broad-based core courses that students have to pursue. There is also a compulsory course called principles of management,” said L.K. Maheshwari, director and vice-chancellor of BITS Pilani. “This course teaches negotiating skills, communication skills, people skills.”

Students at BITS Pilani, which now has campuses in Goa and Hyderabad as well as overseas in Dubai, also undergo a seven-and-a-half-month training with industry. The training, or practice school as it is called, is split into two parts.

Right exposure: The library building of Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani, Rajasthan. At BITS, students have the freedom to set their own time table.

“Also, in a five-and-a-half-month training, if people at the company like you, there is a 95% chance they will offer you a job,” said Garg. “That’s a very big advantage if you want to get into a core company.”

Other private engineering colleges, such as Manipal Institute of Technology, are now emulating this practice school. “This system is already there in BITS Pilani. We are now doing it. Students go to the industry in the last semester to do their project work,” said G.K. Prabhu, registrar of Manipal University, who also teaches in the engineering school.

In another top-ranked college, the focus is on constant change of curriculum in line with industry demands. Birla Institute of Technology at Mesra near Ranchi in Jharkhand, takes formal feedback from alumni for this. “Our syllabus is revised every two years. Especially in computer courses, feedback has been important”, said P.K. Barhai, vice-chancellor of BIT Mesra.

Abhinav Jain, a 2004 batch student of BIT Mesra, also emphasized an annual meeting on campus where curriculum is discussed. “I know of alumni who have attended that,” said Jain, who earned a degree in computer science and engineering, plus a master’s in management. He now works as a consultant in Ernst and Young, an accounting and consulting firm.

But not every private college has the freedom to set its own syllabus or conduct its own examination. Several private colleges are not autonomous but are affiliated to a state-run university that decides, in a centralized manner, what students will learn.

The Bangalore Institute of Technology, for instance, is affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technical University, which revises curriculum once every four years for the several colleges that are affiliated to it.

K.K. Birla, chancellor of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani is also chairman of HT Media Ltd that publishes Mint.