Why IIT Mumbai dropped out of the tech college survey?
By Pulkit Sharma

CyberMedia’s IDC (India) is one of the country’s most comprehensive and respected source for market intelligence and consulting in the fields of IT, telecommunications and consumer technology. CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with 15 publications including Dataquest and PCQuest.

Cybermedia’s flagship magazine Dataquest has just released it list of the top 10 Tech Schools in India in 2009.  Not surprisingly, six Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) dominated the list of the Top 10 T-Schools.

In 2009, IIT Kharagpur topped the 5th IDC-Dataquest T-School 2009 survey for the third successive year, followed by the five other IITs - Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, Roorkee and Guwahati. IIIT Hyderabad, BITS Pilani, NIT Surathkal and IT BHU Varanasi took the other positions in the Top 10. Interestingly, IIIT Hyderabad is the youngest T-School, set up in 1998, in the Top 10 list. IIT Bombay did not participate in the survey.
 
This year, while IIT Kharagpur scored highest on HR perception, IIT Delhi ranked highest on placement records. The HR perception score is based on how recruiters rate each college during their campus visits. Placement score is based on percentage of students placed, number of companies visiting campuses as well as the maximum and average salary offered per annum.

Slowdown impacted placements in 2009, with a dip in the number of companies visiting campuses as well as number of jobs offered. Of the 54 companies that visited T-School campuses, more than half were from IT/BPO sector. Only 16 of the Top 111 T-Schools reported 100% placements. These included BITS, Pilani; IIT Kanpur; Institute of Technology, BHU; Netaji Subhash Institute of Technology (NSIT), Orissa Engineering College, Bhubaneswar and several NITs.

Even as NSIT, New Delhi recorded the highest annual compensation at Rs. 45 lakh from Schlumberger, average annual salary across 111 participating T-Schools stagnated at Rs. 3.5 lakh. The average annual salary of engineering graduates in BPO/ IT industry was a shade higher at Rs. 3.6 lakh. The average annual salaries of IIT graduates registered a drop of 5% to Rs. 5.88 lakh while the average salary of NIT graduates improved 6% to Rs. 4.36 lakh.

Why has IIT Bombay (Mumbai) stopped participating for the last two years in this prestigious survey by arguably one of the most powerful tech magazines in the country?

In 2008, the top five in the list (in order of their rankings) were IIT Kharagpur, IIT Delhi, IIT Roorkee, IIT Kanpur and IIT Guwahati. In 2008, the tech colleges that did not participate were IIT Mumbai, BITS Pilani, Jadavpur University, and NIT Tiruchirapalli.

In 2007, IIT-Kharagpur was the top technology college in India.  It was followed by IIT-Madras, IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Roorkee.

In 2006, the rankings were IIT Madras, IIT Delhi, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati and IIT Bombay in the fifth place.  In 2005, IIT Bombay had the number two ranking.

In 2005, IIT Kanpur was at the No. 1 position followed by IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur and Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.

According to an IIT insider, there is a powerful section within the IIT Mumbai administration, HR and old boy’s network that sincerely believes that the ranking system is flawed and any negative result would only affect future fund raising.  So, IIT Mumbai is the only IIT that has dropped out of this competition.