IITs Need A Reset

The decline in placements point to a widening gap between what industry wants and what it gets

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New government data on campus placements of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have reaffirmed a worrying trend in the country's prestigious engineering colleges. For decades, IITs, especially the elite ones, were considered recession-proof. However, it has not been raining jobs for a while. Except for IIT (Banaras Hindu University), placements for BTech students saw a decline in the 22 other IITs between 2021-22 and 2023-24, according to a parliamentary standing committee report. Some of the older IITs have been given a reality check. Delhi, Bombay, Madras, and Kanpur each presided over a decline of over 10 percentage points. In 2023-24, only three (second-generation) IITs — Jodhpur, Patna, and Goa — recorded over 90% placements. The committee has also reported a similar trend in National Institutes of Technology, including a fall in the average starting salaries of graduates. The declining figures are in comparison to a pandemic year (2020-21), when there was a jump as the job market staged a brief recovery that failed to arrest the overa