Bidders Laing O’Rourke, Bam and Sir Robert McAlpine will now work up detailed bids for the new campus complex ahead of a preferred bidder being named next January.
The successful consortium bidder will form a not-for-profit development company, which has been introduced in Scotland as an alternative to PFI.
This will include a funding model based on building and operating the college over 25 years.
While the capital programme is put at £200m, building work is estimated to be worth around £165m.
Three quarters of the budget will be spent on 650,000 sq ft of new buildings at Cathedral Street in Glasgow city centre, with the balance channeled into a new Riverside Campus on Thistle Street.
Some existing teaching blocks will be demolished and rebuilt, with the whole Riverside Campus due to be finished by 2015.
The City Centre Campus will be completed by 2016.
Construction is due to begin in the summer of 2013.