Engineering Jobs: 25% BTech students from top engineering colleges not placed

NEW DELHI: Over the six years that the ministry of education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework has been ranking engineering colleges, India’s top 50 tech schools together managed to place just over 70 percent of their graduating batches each year. Some students pursued higher education but it is clear from the data, many BTechs left college, even top ones, without jobs.

With a year of online study, most exams cancelled and the second wave of COVID-19, campus placement for engineering colleges had seemed exceptionally difficult in 2019-20.

However, as per data shared by the 50 engineering colleges that were at the top of the NIRF 2020 rankings for engineering, the average placement of these institutions declined by just 1% in 2020. Plus, even within this set there are variations, with some institutions claiming greater placement success in the 2019-20 academic year than in 2018-19.

Started in 2016, NIRF had 1071 participating engineering colleges for the 2020 ranking. More than half of them are in the southern states; 26 percent in the west and the least, just nine percent, in the east of India. Approximately, 20 percent of the ranking weightage is assigned to graduation outcomes, which includes the number of students placed or selected for higher studies and the median salary.

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The NIRF last announced rankings in 2020. Data for all the years leading up to that were sourced from the NIRF website. The ministry of education, which oversees the ranking process, has not announced the 2021 rankings yet. Data for the institutions that were in the top 50 ranks in 2020 have been gleaned from NIRF documents posted on their own websites; these are yet to be scrutinized by the ranking body.

Careers360 has compared the placement data for these engineering colleges from 2016 till 2021. The top 50 in 2020 were not always at the top over those years. The placement data is for the standard four-year BTech programme. A few colleges did not provide data for all the six years. Among them, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Coimbatore and Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar had data for only three years and so, they were not considered for this analysis.

2016-2021: Average placement

The placement percentage of each college has been calculated using the number of students placed and the number of students who graduated within the minimum stipulated time for a B.Tech -- here, four years. Then, the average placement of these 48 colleges was calculated. While the average has fluctuated over the years, overall there has been a decline of about 1.5 percentage points since 2017.

NIRF has divided colleges into two categories: – institutions that are engaged in research and teaching (Category A), and those engaged mainly in teaching (Category B). In 2016, Category B colleges were not selected for ranking due to inconsistencies. Therefore, a direct comparison between that year’s figures with the rest would perhaps be unfair.

But the most notable finding is this: the top engineering colleges in the country collectively struggled to place over a quarter of their students every year. And this was after a few institutes reported they placed around 90% of students, raising the average.

An average of placements at 48 engineering institutions

Higher education after BTech

For 2016, NIRF did not collect data of students selected for higher education. From 2017, the trend of students opting for higher education has shown a steady increase.

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IIT Madras on top

IIT Madras was ranked the number one engineering college in the country for all the five years of NIRF ranking (2016-2020). The percentage of students pursuing higher education shows a decreasing trend but their placement data has fluctuated. Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, IIT Madras had the highest placement.

In 2019, IIT Madras had the highest placement

Placements: Highs and lows

In 2021, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai; Aligarh Muslim University and Anna University could not even place half their students. Of the 48 colleges, 30 percent placed less than 70 percent of their students for the year 2021.

IIT Kanpur shows 104.04 percent placement in 2016. The number of students graduating in minimum stipulated time is 867 but the number of campus placements for that year is 902. Since it was not clear from the documents why the number of students placed was more than the number that graduated, we have considered the second-highest placement for 2016 in its place.

In 2021, 30% of colleges placed less than 70% of their students

BTech median salary

Students placed at International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad were offered a median salary of Rs.16 lakh in 2017 and this has been increasing since. Of the 48 colleges, IIIT Hyderabad has had the highest median salary, from 2017 till date. The median salary accounts for five percent of the total score assigned by NIRF.

IIIT Hyderabad had the highest median salary for BTech graduates

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Private engineering colleges

Of the 48 colleges from the NIRF 2020’s top 50 that were considered here, the vast majority were public institutions.

Among the private colleges, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) Bhubaneswar reported the highest placement percentage -- over 90 percent. It was followed by SRM Institute of Science and Technology - Chennai and BITS Pilani.

KIIT, Bhubaneswar had the highest placement

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