Salem :

Three engineering colleges in western Tamil Nadu  (Coimbatore, Erode and Salem districts) have been conferred awards for being the best in country in the streams of Computer Science and Information Technology, Electronics and Communication Engineering and Electrical Engineering.

The award was conferred on them by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with ministry of human resource development.

“Southern colleges dominated the awards yet again in the engineering category,” said C R Swaminathan, co-chair chairman of CII National Higher Education Committee. Kapil Sibal, Union minister for communications and information technology participated in the function held in New Delhi recently. During his speech, Kapil Sibal called for reforms in the education system to make it child-centric and he said that several initiatives need to be taken to take the system forward.

Ahead of the two day CII Global University-Industry Congress and 5th Higher Education Summit, CII and AICTE conducted a survey throughout the nation. “The objective of the survey was to showcase best practices of industry partnerships across AICTE approved technical institutes in the covered streams. A total of 1,050 AICTE approved institutes from established engineering, management, pharmacy and architecture institutes, and from emerging engineering and management institutes, participated in the voluntary survey,” Swaminathan said.

He also said that top business houses including Tata Chemicals , Forbes Marshall, Elico, Sun Pharma and Pennar Industries joined hands to give awards to the winning institutes in recognition of their strong linkages with industry. “The exercise involved a survey of industry-linkages with colleges where objective scores generated by the AICTE web portal based on data gathered from the online survey, were evaluated by a high-level jury. On-ground visits to shortlisted colleges were made by a team comprising AICTE and CII representatives to ensure that the data submitted was valid. Their feedback was then analyzed to arrive at the final winners,” he said.

The winner in the best industry-linked institute in electronics and communication category was PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore. The award for best industry-linked institute in mechanical engineering went to College of Engineering Pune; for electrical engineering to Kongu Engineering College in Erode; for civil engineering to Walchand Institute of Technology, Sangli; for computer & IT engineering to Sona College of Technology, Salem and for chemical engineering to Institute of Chemical Technology. XLRI Jamshedpur was declared the best industry-linked institute in management. Bombay College of Pharmacy was adjudged winner in the pharmacy stream. “Of them, Sona College of Technology in Salem, PSG College of Technology in Coimbatore and Kongu Engineering College in Perundurai in Erode district are situated in western Tamil Nadu,” Swaminathan said.

source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> Education> Information Technology / TNN / November 11th, 2013