Nagpur: Even as the future of engineering colleges across entire country looks bleak, with vacancies increasing alarmingly every year, city-based Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT, erstwhile VRCE), stands out. The quality of education at the much sought after college can be gauged from its impressive placement record.Maharashtra's only regional engineering college managed to place 1,957 of the 2,757 students found eligible for placements, said information released in reply to an RTI query.VNIT faculty in-charge Rajendra Yerpude, who is also its central public information officer (CPIO), sent the reply to the query raised by activist Abhay Kolarkar. The reply revealed that among VNIT students, the highest package was a whopping Rs65 lakh per year in 2012-13, while last year it was Rs16.17 lakh per year offered by Morgan Stanley Advantage Services Limited. Companies working in core engineering areas like Coal India, Reliance, L&T, and Jindal Steel too appear to prefer VNIT students for their quality education.Even Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (Maha-Metro) started its recruitment from VNIT a couple of years back, which was first reported in detail by TOI on June 13, 2015. VNIT is also involved in technical collaboration with Maha Metro in areas like civil construction, structural design, electrical installation and testing, solar PV installations, signalling and communication systems, excavation engineering and architectural planning.Fittingly, the institute was ranked 42nd in the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) this year, which was the highest for any Nagpur-based institution in the engineering and technology section. It was followed by Ramdeobaba College of Engineering and Management (RCOEM) and GH Raisoni College of Engineering (GHRCE) at 64th and 67th positions respectively. In overall rankings, however, there was not a single institution from the city figuring in top 100, but GHRCE, RCOEM and VNIT found place among between 100 and 150.On the flip side, vacancies in teaching posts continue to haunt the premier institution, just like Nagpur University and other prominent colleges like Laxminarayan Institute of Technology (LIT). Out of the 335 sanctioned posts, about 126 are yet to be filled up, which makes for over 37% vacancies, while 189 of the teachers have PhD qualifications.Kolarkar said VNIT's placement record could be termed impressive after considering the fact that over 73,000 first-year engineering seats couldn't be filled up so far, after end of third round of Centralized Admissions Process (CAP). In Nagpur division's 56 colleges, over 11,000 seats found no takers, according to officials from the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE).

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