1 of 4 best tech schools in K'taka: Report

Bangalore, June 28: Karnataka is home to 25 per cent of top engineering and technical colleges in the country with Indian IT hub Bangalore alone contributing 22 per cent.

According to a latest national survey by IDC along with Dataquest magazine which ranked 117 top technical and engineering colleges in the country, Karnataka had one out of four colleges.

A release from Dataquest said the ranking was based on composite scores arrived on the basis of parameters such as placements, infrastructure, academic environment, industry interface and HR perception.

Besides Bangalore such schools were in Bellary, Mysore, Tumkur and Udupi in Karnataka.

The other cities which contributed significantly to the 117 best T-Schools from South India included Chennai with seven, Delhi five and Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of Delhi, six.

The PES Institute of Technology in Bangalore made it to the top five list from South India with global salaries scaling new highs.

The T-Schools had a very unlikely visitor on their campus looking for employees. It was European major Schlumberger Limited, the world's largest oilfield services corporation operating in 80 countries with 70,000 people of 140 nationalities and revenues topping 19 Billion US Dollar.

As per the third Dataquest-IDC survey of 117 Indian Tech Schools, Schlumberger not only recruited heavily from Indian campuses but was also the highest paymaster in most colleges. The highest salary drawn in campus placements in 2007 was Rs 45 lakh per annum (PA) to a student from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in Delhi.

The company also recruited from BITS Pilani (Rs 40.83 lakh PA), NIT Tiruchirapalli (Rs 40 lakh PA), IIT Guwahati (Rs 32.37 lakh PA), IIT Kharagpur (Rs 23.71 lakh PA), IIT Kanpur (Rs 23 lakh PA) and Institute of Technology, BHU, Varanasi (Rs 23 lakh PA).

The other noteworthy offer was made by Bloomberg, USA to a student from IIT Madras, (Rs 40.5 lakh PA). The highest offer from an IT company was Rs 18 lakh PA to a student of IIT, Kharagpur.

Capital One hired an IIT Roorkee graduate at Rs 34 lakh PA.

Interestingly all these T Schools were among the Top 5 regional toppers in terms of placements, infrastructure, academic environment, industry interface and HR perceptions.

The world's largest software firm Microsoft recruited engineering and computer science graduates at five T-Schools at salaries ranging from Rs 9.1 to Rs 9.5 lakh per annum.

The average annual salary for an engineer recruited from 2007 batch increased by 28 per cent to Rs 3.41 lakh from Rs 2.66 lakh.

Maximum salary offered by IT companies has increased from Rs 15 lakh per annum last year to Rs 18 lakh this year.

IT companies recruited 28 per cent students from IIT in 2007, down from 35 per cent in 2006. This could be due to rising average salaries demanded by students of these premier institutes. Besides, the IIT graduates were now looking at non-IT sector also as a career opportunity, the survey revealed. IIT students received 2.13 times the average NIT engineer's salary and 2.68 times the salary of an engineer recruited from a private T-school.

The intake of students in T schools has been on an increase in a number of institutes. Going by the final year student strength, Jadavpur University, Kolkata is the topper with 850 students;Manipal Institute of Technology, Udupi with 829 students came second, followed by BITS-Pilani with 785 students.

The IITs have around 3,300 students in the final year, averaging 471 students per IIT.

IIT-Kharagpur is the topper with 650 students and IIT-Guwahati had the least students of all IITs, 209.

Of the top T schools which have been ranked, 78 colleges offered M Tech programs and 50 institutes PhD courses in engineering. On an average, 34 per cent of the faculty members hold Doctoral degrees in the Top 100 institutes and there is one faculty member for every 11 students.

UNI