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Journalism of Courage
Salary packages running into crores of rupees, the numbers of students placed, international offers… IIT/engineering placements have been in the news in the past few years. As the demand and expectations for higher packages and better companies increase, the debate around whether Indian engineers are being spoon-fed job opportunities is also gaining momentum.
Some IIT professors believe that students in Indian engineering colleges have been conditioned to expect a campus placement at the end of the four years of their BTech degrees, unlike in most Western colleges.
“The culture of earning and being independent from the day you turn 18 does not exist in India, unlike in the West. Since we have all been brought up this way, even parents feel that there is nothing wrong with students expecting to be placed by colleges. So much so they believe that if they are paying tuition or college fees, then in return their ward should be given campus placement, which can secure their future. Big investments should have guaranteed results,” Lakshmi Narayan Ramasubramanian, an assistant professor at IIT Delhi, told indianexpress.com.
In India, factors such as caste, class, gender, religion, linguistic and cultural identities, place of birth, and parents’ occupation and so on significantly impact a student’s access to quality education and job opportunities.
Engineering students also agree that culture plays a huge role in shaping policies, especially in premium institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology. “In the West, parents not only allow but also encourage their children to live independently and earn their wages. It is all about the mindset that helps shape all our policies. If we adopt the Western policies in India, it may not work here as people will not accept them,” said Rohit Raj, a recent graduate from IIT Tirupati.
The Western model of career services is where the universities have a dedicated team of experts who help students understand the nuances of resume drafting and the correct process of finding job opportunities as well as organise job fairs.
While these career centres or services offer support and advice, they do not promise placement to any student. In the majority of the Western universities, students are encouraged to find jobs on their own, be it through job fairs, internships or self-search.
In some of the biggest engineering institutes such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a Career Advising & Professional Development team that provides students career advising, student leadership opportunities and more. It also provides Graduate professional development, which is skills-based training complementary to your academic coursework that will augment any career path you decide to follow.
The institute also has an ‘Employer Relations’ team provides employers with a point-of-contact to navigate MIT’s decentralized recruiting processes and provide insight on how to connect with academic departments, internship programs, and appropriate student groups.
Experts believe that we simply compare Western universities with Indian institutions or adopt Western models without accounting for the societal differences in which these universities operate.
“In India factors such as caste, class, gender, religion, linguistic and cultural identities, place of birth, and parents’ occupation and so on significantly impact a student’s access to quality education and job opportunities. Without campus placements, students from marginalised or disadvantaged backgrounds may struggle to secure prestigious jobs—not due to a lack of merit or skills, but because they lack the social and cultural capital of their peers. Structural inequalities further restrict their access to opportunities. Blindly emulating Western universities without considering India’s social context can be counterproductive,” said Prof Ajay Saini, an assistant professor at IIT Delhi.
Another factor that experts believe is important to be considered while mimicking the Western model of placements is the proportion of aspirants and job opportunities.
“Students’ strength is much lower in the West and the array of job opportunities is much larger. Students have the privilege of being able to find job opportunities due to better awareness. Due to this, the difficulty that students abroad face in finding a job there is much less than what Indian students might face here. Leaving students on their own in India might put them at a disadvantage,” Prof Lalit Mohan Pandey, an associate professor at IIT Guwahati, told indianexpress.com.
Several experts in the engineering field believe that the current system of placements in the IITs and other Indian engineering colleges is turning out to be an advertisement for the institutes rather than simply being a helpful tool for students.
Most students select IITs on the basis of the packages that recent graduates have earned in the placement season. “This year, when we abolished the branch-change option, some of the branches saw a sudden decline in registrations. This is because earlier students used to think that they will pick a certain IIT at whatever branch is available and then change it to the one they desire, which would have given them a higher package. This goes on to prove that 99 per cent of engineering students pick the IITs on the basis of placement packages only,” said Prof Kala Venkata Uday, an associate professor at IIT Mandi.
Some professors have also complained that this additional task of ensuring all students get placed adds to the pressure on IIT faculty. “We find ourselves in soup because most of the faculty is non-technical. We are academicians and not trained to run a placement campaign,” said Prof Narayan.
According to Prof Narayan, students now use artificial intelligence tools to complete their assignments as their objective is to earn enough grades to be eligible for campus placements and to impress the campus recruiters with their cumulative grade point average (CGPA). “They will copy their assignments from ChatGPT and later blame us if they do not get placed due to their inadequate skills. Students are becoming more goal-oriented from day 1,” he said.
One solution is the focus on the entrepreneurship culture in India. Institutes like IIT Madras have an entrepreneurial ecosystem—pre-incubation cells, incubation cells, and then project support structures for startups. “Besides this, we have various year-round programmes that will help students on the entrepreneurial career pathway. In the last three years, we have had more and more graduates who prefer to take up an entrepreneurial sprint rather than join a job with another company. We have set a target of 100 startups per year and we are promoting that now,” said Prof Sathyan Subbiah, chair of the Career Pathway Centre at IIT Madras.
IITians also agree with Prof Subbiah as they believe this new emphasis will slowly start changing the placement culture in India. While a gradual shift in the placement culture—towards entrepreneurship and startup culture—is one solution, other experts believe that another solution can be a blanket decision by all IITs to stop campus placements.
“Some improvements are needed, like in every model in the world. But IITs are doing a good job in the placement area, and entrepreneurship will soon be taking over. IITs should and are promoting startup culture now, but I believe that we are being able to provide students a very good mix of opportunities and creativity,” said Prof Pandey of IIT Guwahati.
