The Rarefied Realm

For the 28th time, INDIA TODAY takes stock of the best institutes in 14 streams so that the Class of 2024 can have a clear view of its future and work towards it

- KAUSHIK DEKA

"Excellence," former president of India and eminent aerospace scientist A.P.J. Abdul Kalam would say, "is a continuous process and not an accident." This could be a reasonable explanation for why the winners across the streams have been somewhat of a permanent fixture in the top slot for the past five editions of the India Today Best Colleges survey. Luck or laxity in rigour on the part of the surveyors has little to do with that achievement. Rather, the disciplined, unwavering focus of the toppers in embracing change and incorporating innovation in the process of learning is what has cemented their place at the top.

The India Today Best Colleges annual survey has been recognising and celebrating the commitment to excellence shown by these institutions for the past two decades. Now in its 28th year, the survey is powered by a comprehensive, meticulous and rigorous method of evaluating colleges, setting the benchmark in such rankings. A defining and constant element of this process is identifying the modern and updated pedagogy that colleges have adopted.

Innovation Is the Key

This is what separates the best from the rest. Take Hindu College, for instance, which has dominated the Science as well as the Arts streams in this decade. Among other things, it has set up a state-of-the-art research centre for interdisciplinary research that facilitates industry-academia collaboration and introduced interesting add-on certificate courses besides the curriculum such as programmes on fragrances and flavours and Vedic mathematics. With Artificial Intelligence, coding and data analytics becoming all-pervasive, Shri Ram College of Commerce, the topper in the Commerce stream, has entered into collaborations with institutions such as the financial market specialists BSE Institute Ltd to offer students value-added courses on Data Analytics using coding language R.