Approximately every year in India, six lakh students graduate from engineering colleges and the number keeps on growing with every passing year. But there have always been concerns about the quality and relevance of the education provided by many engineering colleges. Recently World Bank announced a 228 crore of aid to 31 Indian engineering colleges to help them revamp their infrastructure, faculty and build research facilities. The goal is to increase the number of post-graduate students and establish modern centers of study and research.

The US and China are the other two engineer-producing countries that produce approximately 9000 PhDs in engineering every year as compared to India’s 1000. The IITs, which have been on the forefront of providing well trained graduate engineers to India also lack in research.

If IITs, or NITs want to be compared with world class institutes like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), then they have to give due attention to research and innovation. Revamping the infrastructure, investing in acquiring the best faculty and providing high-tech research environments can go a long way in producing engineers who are at par with global standards. In fact, this stands true for any engineering institute aspiring to be included in the list of top engineering colleges.