I would say average. Better than many of the private and government colleges/institutions. But poorer as compare to some of the central Universities, NITs and of course IITs. No where compare to even newer IITs, forget about comparing with older ones. I am writing this as a faculty in VIT.
The reason for not exceling in imparting quality education is partly poor quality demotivated students and partly due to the junk faculty associated with VIT since it’s inception. For students i would say students are not bad olny teachers are bad. But a bad teacher can make a student bad as well. This is what is happening in VIT. Poor management, over crowded campus, over loaded faculty and now more interference of founder’s family people in policy making have made things even worse. The person who is in the system knows only those things. For outsiders VIT is the best private engineering institute.