India's Top Biotech Schools

Ranking of institutes imparting biotech education in India.

Biotech is the latest sunrise sector. Analysts feel that
biotech industry may surpass IT and ITeS in overall
growth and employment generation, forex earnings, patent registration, etc. India is considered as one of the hottest biotech destinations. And several people across the world believe that India will be able to produce companies of the level of Amgen in the future.

India's skill and capabilities in biotech is well recognized. But the rapid growth of the industry will ultimately depend on availability of quality manpower and good educational institutions in country. In last one decade, a large number biotech institutes were set up. However, not much has been done for benchmarking of these institutes for their own relative assessment, for industry and for aspiring students. In order to fill the void, BioSpectrum conducted a study to rank the biotech institutes last year and has continued with the effort this year as well.

BioSpectrum's Top Biotech Schools 2005 study included information pertaining to BTech, Masters and PhD courses but not of BSc. courses. This study was conducted in association with CyberMedia Research. To maintain objectivity and avoid biases in ranking the institutes, CyberMedia Research decided to base its methodology on measurable and quantifiable data. As a result, the research team did not seek perceptions and opinions of stakeholders such as students or industry to rank the institutes. Both CyberMedia Research team and BioSpectrum team worked together on this study. While CyberMedia Research team worked on conceptualizing the study, designing the questionnaire and analyzing the data for ranking of the institutes, BioSpectrum team decided on the institutes to be invited for participation in the study, co-ordination with the biotech institutes for collection, sufficiency, adequacy and consistency of the data shared by them.

Jawaharlal Lal Nehru University, the top institute

Amongst all institutes and colleges, which are imparting education at the undergraduate and/ or postgraduate level in the area of Biotech, Jawaharlal Lal Nehru University emerges as the best top ranked institution in the country. It is followed by University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad at the second position, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai at the third position, IIT, New Delhi at the fourth and Anna University, Chennai at the fifth position.

Rank 1... Jawaharlal Lal Nehru University, Delhi

Rank 2... University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad

Rank 3... Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai

Rank 4... IIT, New Delhi

Rank 5... Anna University, Chennai

As one would expect, amongst the Top 20 Biotech institutions in India, 15 are public and only five are in the private sector (Table 1). Barring last few years in which private sector has invested money in higher education; education has largely been in the public domain. Amity Institute of Biotechnology (MBA Biotechnology), Noida, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Biotechnology, Noida, The Oxford College of Science, Bangalore, Shree Manibhai & Navalben Virani Science College, Rajkot, T John College, Bangalore are the five institutions in private sector which occupy slots amongst India's Top 20 institutions in Biotech area. It may further be observed that only Amity Institute of Biotechnology, MBA Biotechnology, Noida figures amongst top 10 institutes.

One big difference between the private and the public institutes is that the private players focused more of procuring the placements. And the students from the public institutions mostly preferred to go for higher education. Probably, this is why institutes offering MBA Biotech-Amity and Pune-have made it to the top 10. In fact Pune University ranks very high (#6) in the overall scheme of things.

As has been mentioned earlier, four parameters have been used to arrive at the overall score or ranking-Faculty, Infrastructure, Industry interaction and Placements. As one would observe, a lot of new institutes have been in this list. The reason for this is the biotech education in the private sector is fairly new and a lot of them stressed on building their infrastructure. The priorities of the students joining the private institutes compared to the established institutes are different. They want to go to the institute with the faculty and repute and pursue higher studies.