Poor placement is a reality in engineering colleges, including the Indian Institutes of Technology. This, despite a strong alumni connect at the premier institutions.
Dheeraj Singh, an independent consultant who mentors students from the IITs, says even IIT-Madras, which has been consistently ranked first among engineering institutions, by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) since the inception of rankings, has been struggling to place all students who opt for campus placement.
“Last year, 2,323 candidates chose campus placement at IIT-Madras but 740 did not get placed, according to the data provided by the NIRF,” Mr. Singh said. In 2021, 37.1% of students were not placed. In 2022, around 34.5% of the students were not placed. This year, 2,000 candidates opted for placement. Through his informal organisation, the Global IIT Alumni Support Group, which includes around 50 IIT alumni, around 300 students are currently being mentored.
“In the 3rd and 4th year, students begin realising that their dreams of jobs are just that. I mentor around 300 to 400 students from various IITs. The state of joblessness is a matter of concern as students go through a very tough competitive Joint Entrance Examination to get into the institution,” he says.
Mr. Singh refers to the convocation data provided by the institutes to the NIRF. He is an alumnus of IIT-Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
Annually, in the second week of December, after the first phase of placement, IIT-Madras would release data of the number of students placed along with details of the companies that visited; first day placements and pay packages. In December 2023, however, the details were sketchy.
A release from the institute said, “The first day of the placements marked a milestone for IIT-M, witnessing a record number of offers.”
Neither did the institute release the number of candidates who opted for campus placement, nor the number of students who had been placed. According to the statement, around 50% of the students had been placed. The statement only said by the end of the first phase of placement, “there was a significant rise in international offers for postgraduate students compared to last year.” The only information that it had was that over 55% of students who were placed, hailed from “socially and economically challenging backgrounds.”
In a response to concerns raised regarding poor placement, the Institute said: “Placements are still ongoing at IIT- Madras. Students have varied interests – to pursue higher studies; some want to establish their own start-ups and venture into entrepreneurship, while some want to write competitive exams, including civil services. They take time to decide. The placement data will be available at the end of July 2024, post convocation.”
