Several higher educational institutions are now emerging in the private sector, which are much larger than the traditional high performing Government funded institutions like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the IITs. We identify seven such mega institutions and use the bibliometric and financial data from NIRF 2017 to see how they compare with IISc when both research excellence and socio-economic performance are taken into account. Apart from other legacy and perception factors that attract the best faculty to premier institutions, the capital expenditure per faculty per year must be increased by 5 to 50 times as the case may be, before these universities can become attractive destinations for the best and brightest of aspiring faculty.