Recommended CS/IT Programs Outside IIT System

Here I am listing a very small set of colleges about which I have some personal knowledge either through a visit, or by checking out their website extensively, and based on my limited knowledge I can recommend these departments for good-quality undergraduate education in CS/IT areas. I am also trying to give some reasons in brief as to why I think these departments are good. If I have not listed a college/department here, it is almost certainly because I don't know about it enough, and not because I consider that college not good enough. So please don't feel bad if your college or alma mater is not listed here.
Other minimum requirements for listing here:

I only list colleges which are autonomous in academic processes (that is, they are either university themselves or have been declared deemed to be university by UGC).
I only list colleges which have an under-graduate program in Computer Science.
In addition, they must be running a proper PG program whose admission requirements include an undergraduate degree in Computer Science or related area. (for example, MS/ME/MTech or PhD program.)
The list is as follows. (You can jump to the description of each department by clicking on the name.)

IIIT, Hyderabad
NIT, Calicut
DA-IICT, Gandhinagar
LNMIIT, Jaipur
BITS, Pilani
College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai
Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh
NIT, Hamirpur
While I will by and large refrain from ranking colleges, I have to admit that I consider IIIT, Hyderabad as the best alternative to IITs (from amongst the colleges I know or I have been told of). This Institute is already competing with IITs on attracting faculty, and I am sure very soon they will start competing on attracting students also. (I believe that they are already getting students who are as good as those in IITs. I believe that a rank in AIEEE is equivalent to a rank in JEE. After all, how many good students will give JEE but not give AIEEE. But on any given day, someone could do well or not so well depending on health, luck, and other such factor. So there are many who for some reason get a better AIEEE rank than a JEE rank, and such persons, who as I said above are equally good, just a tad unlucky, chose to join IIIT Hyderabad.) I have visited IIIT Hyderabad umpteen number of times, and I come back more impressed every time I go there.

In September 2006, I had a chance to visit NIT Calicut, and I must say that I was very impressed. As you can see from the short list of colleges on this page, I do not get impressed easily. And let me tell you why. The first thing I noticed was that pretty much every faculty member in the department had a degree from either an IIT or IISc. Thry do hire people who have a BTech degree, but then ask them to do graduate education from outside. In most colleges, they run graduate programs (MTech or PhD) primarily to ensure that their own faculty members can get part-time graduate degrees. But this in-breeding is dangerous for the quality of a department. The maintenance of the campus is another thing that struck me as something great. In many campuses I see buildings in black or green colour because of what they will like to claim is heavy rain. But NITC, all the buildings looked good from the outside, and I was told that they put a coat of paint frequently to ensure that the buildings do not look ugly. The infrastructure is very good, and is one of the few colleges who have actually used up the grants given to them under the TEQUIP program. The faculty is very cohesive. They have resisted the temptation of starting a program on IT. (Why shouldn't CSE and IT departments be merged in all NITs? There is hardly any difference in the programs, and these differences can be handled by offering electives.)

Another Institute, which is sure to make an impact in future is DA-IICT at Gandhinagar. I recently went through their website, and was very impressed with the number of faculty members with PhD degrees from various IITs and mid-level US universities. And let me admit, being a faculty member myself, I think that an Institute which has so many of PhDs in their faculty, has to be on the right track. Of course, having "Dhirubhai Ambani" in the name of the Institute will ensure that the ADA (Anil Dhirubhai Ambani) group would never let it down, and become a second-rate institution. Further, in their curriculum, there is a unique mix of Information Technology (CS) and Communication Technology, and depending on one's interest, one can go into the depth in either direction. In most colleges, you decide at the time of admission whether you want to do a BTech in CS or a BTech in ECE. That dilemna is not there, if you join DA-IICT. And they seem to truly believe that under-graduate education is about broadening the horizons, and not become an expert. So not only do they have humanities courses in their curriculum, and they claim all the standard things about extra-curricular activities, and facilities, but they have a six-week stay in a rural setting as part of curriculum. (By the way, this is the only college on this list, where I have not personally visited. What I am writing here is based on reading their website, and interacting with a few faculty members when they have visited IIT Kanpur.)

L N Mittal Institute of Information Technology is the third of the IT-focused institutes which has a potential to compete with the IIT system. (The other two being IIIT, Hyderabad, and DA-IICT, Gandhinagar.) The institute has excellent infrastructure, beautiful architecture, and some of the best teachers in the country, who have retired from IIT system in recent times. Lack of sufficient number of young faculty members is a small cause for concern, which I am sure the Institute will work on. The curriculum is modern, and has only 40 courses. (Elsewhere, I have argued that a BTech curriculum should not have more than 160 credits or so, which is equivalent to regular 40 courses.) And of course, Jaipur is arguably the second best city to live in North India, after Chandigarh.

Recently added: I have recently been offered to join LNMIIT as its next Director, and I have accepted the offer. I will be shifting to Jaipur soon. I am really excited about the opportunity, as the first Director has laid a wonderful foundation, and now the Institute is in the take off stage, where it can dream of competing with the very best in the country. Feel free to contact me for more details.

LNMIIT is a unique experiment of education in the joint sector. It is not a private college, nor is it a government college. It is a joint venture between the Rajasthan Government and Laxmi Mittal Foundation.

I also admire BITS, Pilani for a lot of innovation that they have been doing in the engineering education. Whether it is the one semester training (Practice School) in the industry, or their online entrance exam, they always seem to be a step ahead of others in the new ways of doing education. They have an excellent dual-degree program, more flexible than any IIT can boast of. They are accredited by NAAC. They also have a very significant presence in distance education sector. While IIMs will keep talking about opening campuses abroad, BITS has gone ahead with a campus in Dubai. They also have a campus in Goa, and are working on a campus in Hyderabad. (The Goa campus is a beauty.) They have the best admission process, which takes some amount of language abilities into account. Of course, one concern that I have is whether BITS is spreading itself too thin by growing so fast. Also, their focus on research seems less than other top class institutes in the country.

Another excellent place that I visited in 2006 is College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai. The CS department has a fairly large faculty, and lots of them have a PhD degree. There is an active research program, and one can find several publications from that department in literature. It is an active and vibrant department. Also, they have a very interesting part-time under-graduate program. Whenever I visit a department, I am looking out for something unique, an idea which is worth emulating, and I don't know of any other place which has such a part-time under-graduate program. The curriculum is based on a credit-based system, which is a big positive.

A college which was always considered good, but has improved significantly in the last couple of years is Punjab Engineering College or better known as PEC. In 2004, PEC gained Deemed University status, and since then has undergone a complete transition in its academic processes. Its then Director, Prof. Vijay Gupta (from IIT Kanpur) is a visionary, and has fantastic leadership qualities. To me, his presence in PEC was enough to place them in this list of mine (though the college has to now show that it can continue the good work even after he has left). Of course, the college was not an unknown quantity earlier also. Around 2001, news reports had suggested that PEC will be one of the colleges selected for an upgrade to the status of an IIT. Politics play a big role in these decisions, and another committee chose another set of colleges for a possible upgrade. The college requires each student to have its own laptop (bulk discounts, loans, scholarships available for poor). This is something which is very significant, and I doubt whether any other government college of engineering has this as a requirement. It is a gutsy decision, and I admire PEC for that. They have a good curriculum that allows students sufficient breadth as well as depth without overloading them. The infrastrcuture is good too. And, of course, the city of Chandigarh is one of the best cities in the country to live in.

If one were to look four years from now and say which college has the best chances of breaking into top 10, I have no doubt in my mind that that college has to be NIT Hamirpur. Besides being the most beautiful campus that I have visited (and I have visited more than 100 colleges in the country), the improvements are everywhere to see. You talk to anyone and they have a story to tell, a story of change, a change for the positive. The infrastructure improvement (computers, Internet bandwidth, buildings, and everything else) are taking place at a very fast place. It is no longer a sleepy NIT, with no link to the outside world. Now they welcome visitors from other NITs, IITs, and everywhere else. And once you go there, you are bound to fall in love with the campus. The curriculum has seen major changes (for the good). There is focus on hiring more faculty. They are starting new MTech programs. They are starting to build relationships with their alumni. Everything that a college can and should do is being done at NIT Hamirpur, and I am sure they will be in the top few soon. So if you are looking for a college which has less brand equity now (and hence easier to get into) but is likely to have a good name when you graduate, my bet will be on NIT Hamirpur.



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If you have any comments, you can send me email at: dheeraj[AT]iitk.ac.in.