Academic activities in the area of electronic digital computers were started in Jadavpur University under the ETCE Department in the early sixties and it got a big fillip in 1962 when the ISIJU project was undertaken in the Department in collaboration with the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Calcutta. The ISIJU-1 computer was built and commissioned in 1966 and the success of this pioneering project prompted the U.G.C. to sanction a Computer Centre in Jadavpur University. The Centre was given adequate resources in terms of personnel, equipment, books, accessories, building space, research fellowship, etc. and from the year 1968, it started offering a one-year P.G. Diploma course in Computer Science with an intake of 20 students from all over India.

This course, the earliest of its kind in the country, ran very successfully till 1982-83 academic session and was discontinued thereafter at the instance of the UGC. During the 5th plan, UGC visiting committee for the University had mentioned in their report that the ETCE department was one of the two institutions in the country which had pioneered computer education and suggested that an undergraduate course in the area of Computer Science and Engineering be offered by this department. As a consequence of this, the B.C.S.E. program with an intake capacity of 30 students (15 from West Bengal and the rest from the other states in the Eastern Region) was started in 1981 with the approval and financial support of the UGC. The intake capacity segments increased several times resulting in the present intake capacity of 87.

A grant was given by the UGC in 1982 for starting a Masters degree course in Computer Science and Engineering by converting the existing one-year P.G. Diploma Course in Computer Science. In accordance with this, a 3-semester M.C.S.E. program was started from the academic session 1985-86. In the middle of the year, 1988, the ETCE Department which had considerably overgrown during the previous two decades and was running 3 different undergraduate and 2 different post-graduate programs, was trifurcated into three separate Departments, namely ETCE, CSE (Computer Science and Engineering) and IE (Instrumentation Engineering) (now renamed as Instrumentation and Electronics Engineering (IEE)).

As a result, most of the computer-related activities were transferred to the present CSE Department which was created for this very purpose. The MCA program of the University, which was started under the Science Faculty during the 1988-89 session, was brought into the Computer Science & Engineering Department from the 1989-90 session. Another Master degree program, M. Tech in Computer Technology (M.T.C.T.) (a 3-year evening program) was started from the 2000-01 session. Currently, the department offers four programs. The intakes are as follows: BCSE (4 years) – 87, MCSE (2 years) – 37, MCA (2 years) – 53, MTCT (3 years) – 44