Greater Noida (Political Desk): Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday raised concerns over the troubling state of campus placements at the country’s premier educational institutions. Citing recent data, he highlighted that 22 out of 23 IITs witnessed a decline in placements between 2021–22 and 2023–24, with 15 of them experiencing a drop of over 10 percentage points.
Jairam Ramesh said in a press release, “In its 364th Report on the Demand for Grants for the Higher Education Department, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports noted a concerning decline in the placements at several of India’s top institutions –IITs, NITs, and IIITs–and shared detailed data for placements at the IITs for the last few years.”
Sharing a recent data, he said, “Today, a leading daily has published a report with more details on the worrying trends in placements at the NITs and IIITs. Some of the key trends identified are as follows –
•Between 2021-22 and 2023-24, 22 out of the 23 IITs recorded a decline in placements. The drop was over 10 percentage points at 15 IITs.
•In 2021-22, 90.43% of B Tech students at IITs who appeared for placements were placed –in 2023-24, only 80.25% of the students secured jobs.
•23 of the 25 IIITs witnessed a drop in the placement in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22.16 of them sawa decline of over 10 percentage points.
•Between 2022-23 and 2023-24, 27 of the 31 NITs recorded a fall in average salary packages offered to engineering graduates. Three of these institutes saw the average package decline by over₹3 lakh per annum (LPA).
•In the same years, the number of students placed at 31 NITs also dropped from 18,957to 16,915, a decrease of 10.77%
Congress leader further said, “The IITsare the nation’s premier institutions for engineering, with the most competitive admissions processesthat attract the best of faculty and students. Engineering is moreover considered to be among the most marketable of all degrees. If one-fifth of the engineers at IITs are unable to find jobs, it raises concern over how the larger population of educated youth in this country is able to secure employment. Indeed, the fact that NITs and IIITs are also seeing a decline in placements points to a large-scale stagnation in job markets.”
“Similarly, the fall in the average salary package secured by engineers graduating from our NITs points to a stagnation in salaries.Several data points –including the Government’s own Periodic Labour Force Survey data –have already indicated the same.The Indian National Congress has been raising the issues of mass unemployment and wage stagnation for several years. The placements data proves –once again -that these crises are not just afflicting the informal sector and the rural population alone but are causing distress even in our most elite educational institutions,” he added.
