Monday, September 7, 2009

Indian IT companies skip campus recruitment

With Nasscom, the software industry's apex body advising its members not to go to campuses for recruitment, the placements at engineering colleges has dried up. However, although 2008-09 was a difficult year for training and placement officers (TPO) at engineering colleges, 2009-10 could be the most critical year for campus placements, reports Economic Times.

JN Pitambare, Dean of Sinhagad Institute says, "Normally, 75-80 percent of the placements used to take place by mid-August. However, this year I will be happy if I am able to place even 10-15 percent of our students by December."

SV Dravid, TPO, DY Patil College of Engineering at Akurdi, near Pune said, "Last year, we had placed 150 students by this time. This year, not a single student has been placed. I hope the situation improves by December." Normally the big software companies finish recruitment by mid-August, placing around 75 percent of the college students.The core sector companies used to come from August, but this year they are non-committal.

Companies have been telling TPOs that their placement requirements are yet to be firmed up since things are not planned yet or they do not know how many projects they will get. "Most of the core companies are in a dilemma. They have promised to come for placements by December," said TPO Federation President Professor Shital Rawandale. Not only are there fewer jobs on offer for 2009-10 but the companies are adopting various techniques to defer the joining dates of candidates recruited last year or even to reject them.

Top colleges like the College of Engineering Pune (COEP) are also facing problems. "Of the 576 students placed last year, only 150 have joined till now. For the rest of them, joining has been deferred from July to December," said Assistant TPO, COEP, SA Meshram.

Some of the selected candidates are being asked to take more tests. With the recession, singing of bonds has also returned. "Some small and medium-sized software companies now want the candidates whom they had already selected to enter into two-year bonds," said a TPO.
[Source: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/Indian_IT_companies_skip_campus_recruitment_-nid-60996.html]

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

IISc is India's top ranking engg/tech institute


IISc is India's top ranking engg/tech institute

Seema Singh - Sunday, August 09, 2009 11:52 AM
...Among the 67 engineering and technological institutes which have a publishing record.
Comparing this record between 1999 and 2008, Gangan Prathap and BM Gupta report in Aug 10 issue of Current Science that IISc ranks No. 1, followed by some IITs. (list below).
These institutes together have published 75,166 papers during this period, according to publication data downloaded from the SCOPUS International multidisciplinary bibliographical database. Put together, this is more than the output of the university sector (59,685 papers) and constitutes nearly 23% of the total cumulative research output from India during 1999-2008.
You can see the full report here.
The ranks are not surprising, though it will surely cause some heart-burn among non-IISc researchers, esp those in the Universities (Central Universities in particular who are better than other universities) who constantly gripe about IISc's ‘ivory tower' position.
But what is disappointing though is the output of National Institutes of Technology, or NITs who have been around for a long time (earlier known as RECs) and have been upgraded to deemed university or NIT status.
This report shows many Indian engineering and technological universities and private institutes are doing comparatively better in terms of performance.
There's a heated debate among the academics, National Knowledge Commission members and policy makers on how to improve the quality of sci-tech education in the country, which hinges very much on research and publication, a habit which most universities have almost given up. Earlier inthis series in Mint and blog, we have explored this subject.
The present ranking gives one more set of data to assess where our educational institutions are.
Below is a list of top 30 institutes, followed by their number of publication and a newly proposed performance index (or p)
1 IISc, Bangalore; 12951; p - 50.17
2 IIT Kanpur; 6234; p - 39.27
3 IIT Bombay; 7228; p - 36.73
4 IIT Kharagpur; 7370; p- 35.37
5 IIT Delhi; 6520' p- 32.51
6 Jadavpur University; 4807; p- 30.30
7 IIT Madras; 5715; p- 29.09
8 IIT Roorkee; 3471; p- 25.93
9 Anna University; 3687; p- 24.54
10 IIT Guwahati; 1596; p- 19.36
11 Cochin University of Science and Technology; 1625; p- 18.67
12 BITS, Pilani; 867; p- 18.33
13 Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai; 652; p- 18.12
14 IT BHU, Varanasi; 878; p- 13.28
15 Bengal Engineering and Science University Howrah; 891; p- 12.44
16 College of Engineering, Anna University, Chennai; 1000; p- 12.34
17 Harcourt Butler Institute of Technology, Kanpur; 425; p-10.61
18. Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad; 738; p- 10.20
19 Maulana Azad NIT, Bhopal; 155; p- 9.85
20 NIT/REC, Rourkela; 557; p- 9.46
21 NIT/REC, Warangal; 388; p- 9.31
22 NIT/REC, Trichy; 745; p- 9.31
23 Sant Longowal Institute of Engineering and Technology, Sangrur; 324; p- 9.12
24 PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore; 803; p- 9.09
25 NIT, Jamshedpur; 817; p- 9.02
26 Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, Patiala; 422; p- 8.91
27 Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, New Delhi; 326; p- 8.58
28 Delhi College of Engineering, New Delhi; 279; p-8.50
29 BIT, Mesra; 472; p- 8.36
30 S.J. College of Engineering, Mysore; 241; p- 8.36