No job guarantee for top tech school grads

At IIT Dharwad, one of the newer additions to the league of premier tech schools, 69% of the students registered with the placement cell are yet to find jobs.

A graduate from one of the IITs in a southern state is suffering from anxiety these days. Not because she hasn’t got good grades but because she has got a placement with a company that has offered her a package of only Rs 8 lakh per annum, which is low if one considers her alma mater. Her self-esteem has taken a hit as her parents are deliberately being dishonest when bragging about their daughter’s pay package.

She is not alone. Several others have been offered packages as low as Rs 3-5 lakh per annum, says Dheeraj Singh, an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and founder of Global IIT Alumni Support Group. Singh has compiled data based on the RTI replies from the IITs for the past three years and from the feedback of students and media reports for the unofficial estimates. Economists say that the global slowdown in the tech sector has not spared the creme-de-la-cremes of the engineering institutes. It is impacting the mental health of otherwise brilliant students, who entered these haloed institutes, after cracking one of the world’s toughest entrance exams.

Extrapolating from the data he acquired from the RTI replies, Singh says 40 per cent of the students, who registered with the placement cells of their respective IITs, have not got placements yet. Amongst the older IITs, in IIT Bombay, at least 33 per cent of students, who registered for placements this year, have not found takers till recently. Nearly 30 per cent of the students did not get placement in 2022 and 2023. In IIT Delhi, according to Singh, the number of students who have not found placement stood at 40 per cent till recently. The figure was 25 per cent in 2022 and 16 per cent in 2023.

The officials of IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, and IIT Kharagpur say that the placement figures could be shared only when the process would be over at the end of June. The emails to IIT Delhi and Dharwad for formal comments and updated data remain unanswered. IIT Bombay has reverted saying the placement season is on and ends on June 30, 2024 and then the date will be compiled and released at the end of placement season.

At IIT Dharwad, one of the newer additions to the league of premier tech schools, 69 per cent of the students registered with the placement cell are yet to find jobs, according to the RTI replies received by Singh. Vijeth J Kotagi, the PRO of the IIT Dharwad, says that at least 40 per cent of the graduating students would go in for higher studies. Another 15 per cent would go for competitive exams. He adds that the exact data for placement this year cannot be given now as the process will continue till August. He, however, says that many students got more than one job offer.

Singh, who mentors IIT students, says the scenario is dismal. “The older IITs are bell-weather institutes, and if pass-outs from there are not getting jobs, then it is worrying. No new tech jobs are being added. Old jobs are being wiped out due to technological advancement and AI.”

In IIT Gandhinagar, 59 per cent of students are yet to secure placement in 2024. This figure was 29 per cent in 2023 and 25 per cent in 2022. Out of a total of 398 students who registered for placement in 2023-2024, 117 have received offers and 46 have pre-placement offers. Although placements are still on, 235 have not been able to secure placements till now, according to the latest RTI reply. The average salary in 2024 is a tad higher at Rs 18.20 lakh per annum, compared to Rs 14 lakh in 2022 and Rs 17.85 lakh in 2023.

Even as there has been a fall in the placements from IIT Palakkad in Kerala so far this year, the authorities are claiming that the scenario is improving now. As per reports in a section of media, only less than 50 percent of the students who registered for placements in 2023-24 got placements till the end of April. While the IIT Palakkad authorities refuse to give a formal comment on the scenario, an official of the placement cell admits that there was a fall in the placements till April, which he says was a general phenomenon due to the concerns over a global slowdown.

He however adds that there was considerable change in the scenario now. "During this month many firms have come up for placements and hence there will be considerable improvement," said the official who does not want to be identified.

Repeated requests by DH to the IIT Palakkad Director for formal comments and data on the placements made so far this year remain unanswered.

IIT-Palakkad used to have 90 percent placements during the previous years. It was 90 percent in 2020, 84.34 in 2021, 91.19 in 2022 and 90.05 in 2023.

The placement officer of the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram, which is one of the high-ranking engineering colleges in Kerala, says that bulk placements by IT service companies are low this time.

Last year CET had 80 per cent placement, while it was only 65 per cent so far this year. But the placement process will be on for a couple of months more and hence there could be further improvement in the total figures, placement officer Professor K Sunilkumar tells DH.

He also says that this year product companies and automotive companies were making considerable placements. Automotive companies that earlier used to go the or placements from mechanical streams are now making recruitment from other streams like computer science and electronics too, he added.

Singh says : “The average salary has come down to Rs 15 lakh per annum, even receding to as low as Rs three to Rs five lakh per annum. Not only is there unemployment but serious under-employment. The bigger companies are moving from growth mode to profitability mode and depending less and less on human resources. Joblessness or jobs with much lower salaries are affecting the mental health of students. There is a mental block in India which equals an IIT graduate with a one crore package. And the lopsided PR statements usually talk about the Day 1 placements and crore packages.” Singh suggests rolling placements instead of static annual placements wherein students who have passed out earlier, can also apply the next year.

Echoing the same thoughts on economy, Professor Furqan Qamar of the Centre for Management Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia University, says: “No jobs or lesser pay packets for IITians is not an educational phenomenon. It is an economic one as there is a slump in the global economy and it consequently affects our economy. The Indian economy has seen jobless growth for years, and hence the inability to absorb sound technical hands. Whatever jobs are on offer, the pay is low with no social security.” Reiterating his faith in Indian engineers, he says when the same talent goes abroad, they excel as innovators mainly because of an enabling ecosystem. “Here the researchers are hit by funding issues, peer group politics, non-academic work, quality faculty and inability to market their technology.”

However labour economist Santosh Mehrotra begs to differ. He says, “Indians have never been highly skilled at the cutting edge of Information technology. It is a myth that Indians are at the cutting edge of creativity. They are not. India is the back office of the IT revolution. Most of our foreign exchange comes from the grunge work Indians do at the back office. Indians are application experts and not innovators of the world.

Even though the UN World Economic Situation and Prospects January 2024 report predicts India to grow at 6.2 per cent, the World Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report says the global growth is projected to slow down for the third year in a row - from 2.6 per cent last year to 2.4 per cent in 2024. Overall, there is a slump in the economy, so all sectors are likely to be affected, says Dipa Sinha, assistant professor at Ambedkar University.

As per LinkedIn data, more than half of the jobs in India will be affected by AI. A Goldman Sachs report of April 2023 by economists Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani says a new wave of AI systems may have a major impact on employment markets around the world. Shifts in workflows triggered by these could expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation.

Not just the economy, job market, and technological advancement, the increasing batch sizes of IITs is a challenge, which the premier institutes have to deal with.

An official of an IIT says that every year the batch sizes are increasing but the markets are not growing exponentially. “It is a challenge, and we are not giving up. The placement process has become long drawn and will end in June,” says the official, who does not want to be identified. In 2022-23, 75 per cent of students, who were registered, were placed through the placement cell of the IIT he works for, while 15 per cent searched for jobs on their own and only 5 per cent remained unemployed.

As per the IIT Bombay website for the year 2022-23, 152 B Tech, 79 M Tech, and one PhD student out of a total of 253 students of Computer Science and Engineering found placement.

Through an April 4, 2024, post on X, IIT Bombay debunked media reports claiming 36 per cent of its current batch, 2024 remained without jobs. However, they shared an exit survey conducted on graduating students of 2022-23, even inviting scrutiny of their findings. The post read, “Lately there has been news that 30 per cent of IITB students do not get jobs!. An exit survey among graduating students in 2022-23 says only 6.1 per cent are still looking for jobs.”

According to economists polled by Reuters in April 2024, despite growing at the fastest pace among major peers, the economy has failed to generate enough jobs for its large and expanding young population, a key issue among citizens in the midst of electing the new government.

Mehrotra says, “As per the economy, there are limits within the organised sector. Bigger companies are not creating jobs, they are growing at the expense of smaller companies and as such there is skewed growth. Only if there is sustainability in jobs, would there be sustainability in growth and consequently there would be a systematic rise in investments.”

Questioning the massification of education, Mehrotra adds: “There is a real economic crisis if it has hit the crème-de-la-creme of our institutions. Our economy is not generating enough jobs, although more and more young students are coming out with better degrees and education. Our economy remains incapable of providing adequate employment opportunities for these young graduates. Also, there are questions on quality when there is massification of education and enrolment.”

However, some say this massification of education is necessary to correct the regional imbalance. Professor Qamar says the expansion has to happen as otherwise regional imbalance would remain because of educational institutes’ location. “One should not limit access to education and make it elitist. As for the newer IITs, whose placement records may not be as high as older ones, they have to be given time to grow."