Hi Swain

University of Petroleum & Energy Studies (UPES), Located at Dehradun with main campus in Bidholi village 25 km from main city. This a private university operated be some corporate businessman’s. I have in person studied and worked here for a total of five years. I think it my duty to provide an insight incidences/happening about UPES which might help you in taking your decision about this University.

My observations are as follows:

Merits:

1. The location of UPES is just behind Mussorie hills. There also trekking route from UPES back gate to mussorie with a fishing point (river) in between. Also the campus is neat and clean and well maintained. I consider it an option to tour UPES for a few days if you have some time. This only merit it has right now.

Demits:

1. The actual fees (not fees structure) and other expenses like industrial tour, summer classes, reevaluation, direct study, corticated issue, library and other activities are very high. If you are on a student loan then kindly avoid this university and you will not able to clear your loan on your salary and in the end become a bank defaulter at a young age.

2. Teaching and research quality is poor and mismanaged also.

3. Placement cells officials treat the final year students badly when they contently enquire about a job offer. Placement is very poor means up to 40-50%; with most of the jobs in hand salary is approximately 15,000 Rupees per month. They will show you tall promises and companies coming but in actuality they are not capable enough to put their 3rd year students of engineering in summer internship also. In the end they pressurize student to go and get it on their own. You can verify this with 4th year students in private.

4. This time in year 2016 almost 50% seats in engineering are lying vacant in UPES. For a glimpse Power system Engineering registered students 5 out of 60, Electrical Engineering 30/60, Electronics Engg 25/60, Instrumentation 0/60, Energy trading 0/ 60, Mechanical Deptt 250/500, civil Engineering 30/60, Geoscience 30/60, Automotive Design Engg 45/60, Applied Petroleum 45/60 etc. In nut and shell UPES is a sinking ship now.

5. Faculty qualification and quality is questionable. 90 % faculty are Ph. D. from UPES itself or are pursuing Ph. D. from there, which believe is worthless degree of this University. This university do not any research facility, software (in actual), IEEE full fledge subscriptions etc. Everything is for formality or on paper. They teach their faculty to be nicely dressed like a gentleman that’s it.

6. One faculty of law cores was caught taking bribe (cash) for increasing their attendance is his course. Seldom faculty asks for alcohol, wine etc. for marks or attendance. You can verify this online.

7. One dean was caught asking for sexual favor from girl students by calling them at his residence. This you can too verify.

8. NAAC committee which provides grades to Indian Universities as per their performance has awarded Grade ‘C’ to UPES because of its worst academic performance and this is the lowest grade awarded to any Indian university. You can directly verify this from UPES as they do not disclose this information.

9. They tried many times to get rid of C grade called NAAC for reevaluation but still they gave honestly C grade.

10. They do not provide course books study material to students from the library so as to cover all the courses of a semester. They will charge you full for the books will provide you 3-4 books for a semester, ask you to buy others own your own and take the issued one back and then again issue then to juniors after taking money from them. Verify this too directly from the librarian face to face.

11. Engineering degrees given by UPES are not accepted for government jobs. 100 % verify this from passed out. This true for 80% degrees of UPES and mostly students came to know this when they apply for a government job and go for an interview. Students went for strike due to this in UPES for 15 days but nothing happened. In the end they say government jobs are boring go for private jobs.

12. Laboratories in UPES are in worst of its state do visit them. Except (Physics & chemistry labs which are average) all other labs worst than labs in other small private colleges in terms of lab space, technicians, equipment quality, latest experiments, working condition of software available. UPES spends least money on labs, keep a note of this point.

13. Sold out, yes UPES is sold out to laureate group whose sole purpose is only to increase its profits. This is despite of the fact that UPES call itself a non profit organisation. Various cases in uttarakhand courts are registered on UPES in issues like this