Learning Grounds

The India Today Best Colleges survey shows quality education has broken the national capital barrier—Bengaluru colleges get the top rank in four streams

- Kaushik Deka

TWO DECADES AGO, WHEN India today published its first ever Best Colleges survey on June 23, 1997, it became a pioneering effort. No such study had ever been done to rank colleges across the states. Since then, several attempts have been made to replicate our study. The Union government has also recognised the importance of healthy competition among educational institutes and launched its own rankings for the past two years.

But what sets the India today survey apart is the continuous endeavour to innovate, expand and improvise. In our first year, we brought out a joint list of top 10 colleges across three streams—arts, science and commerce—and five colleges in two streams—engineering and medicine. We consulted the principals of 145 colleges in 10 cities. Today, our survey covers 2,965 colleges examined in 13 streams. The survey has expanded to 18 cities for arts, science and commerce and all over India for the other 10 streams. As the methodology (see box: How the Colleges Were Ranked) shows, the goal is to make the study more scientific and flawless.

There have been some encouraging trends, too, with quality educational institutes coming up in cities other than the national capital. For instance, colleges in Bengaluru top in four streams, and several of the city’s colleges have significantly improved their rankings over the past three years. This year, we have seen colleges from Mumbai and Kolkata debut in the top five in a couple of streams.

Technical education has grown rapidly in recent years with the annual enrolment of scientists, engineers and technicians exceeding 2 million. Private professional institutes have a big role to play in the coming years. So this year, we have ranked the top promising institutes to watch out for.