Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan

Being one of 60 "better performing" universities given "graded autonomy" by India’s Universities Grants Committee in 2018 continued the rapid progress made in little more than 20 years since foundation. Starting in 1997 as the Institute of Technical Education and Research in Bhubaneswar, it spent 10 years as an affiliate, first of Utkal University then of Biju Pathaik University of Technology before in 2007 attaining a ‘deemed to be’ university status so cherished that the words were incorporated into the institutional crest. Based on a 127-acre campus in Bhubaneshwar, capital of Odisha state, it aspires to be "a leading institution of higher education in its chosen areas of concentration", and in 2019 offered degree courses in engineering, medicine, dentistry, management, hotel management, pharmacy, agriculture, nursing and law. Students are recruited by the SAAT entrance examination, held annually since 2009 and most recently offered offline at 25 centres in Odisha and six elsewhere in India, online at four centres in the state and 37 outside. Engineering operates a "project-based" curriculum with students asked to design and realise projects intended to assist the underprivileged, while students in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and nursing are attached to the 1,024-bed teaching hospital. In 2019 it was ranked 24th among universities in the National Institutional Ratings Framework, 41st overall, 21st in medicine and 32nd in engineering, and was voted the "Most Preferred University for Women’s Education" by the National Leadership Summit on Women and Education.