Congress says placement dip at engineering institutions shows a worrying trend
The Congress said that the fall in the average salary package secured by engineers graduating from NITs points to a ‘stagnation in salaries’
New Delhi: The Congress party on Monday said that “worrying trends” in students’ placements at leading engineering institutions like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) are pointing towards “a large-scale stagnation in job market.”
Citing a Hindustan Times report on placements at NITs and IIITs, Congress MP and party’s general secretary (communications) Jairam Ramesh said that the fall in the average salary package secured by engineers graduating from NITs points to a “stagnation in salaries.”
In its report of demands for grants of the higher education department 2025-26 tabled in Rajya Sabha on March 26, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports flagged an “unusual decline” in placement of engineering graduates at IITs and IIITs between 2021–22 and 2023–24, and expressed concern over “a decline” in average salary packages at the NITs between 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Interestingly, while these data points were discussed by the panel, they did not find a mention in the report itself, which restricted itself to the performance of the IITs. This data showed that 22 out of the 23 IITs, with IIT (BHU) being the sole outlier, recorded a decline in the placements in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22. IIT Dharwad recorded the sharpest drop of nearly 25 percentage points and IIT Kharagpur the smallest (2.88 percentage points). The drop was over 10 percentage points at 15 IITs.
HT on Monday reported that the average salary package for engineering graduates from NITs dropped in 27 of the 31 institutions between 2022-23 and 2023-24, with three NITs witnessing an annual decline of over ₹3 lakh. The total number of students placed at NITs also fell by 10.77% during the same period, from 18,957 to 16,915.
As many as 23 out of the 25 IIITs saw a fall in placement rates in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22, with 16 reporting a decline of more than 10 percentage points.
“...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....,” Ramesh said in a statement.
Stating that the Opposition party has been raising the issues of “mass unemployment and wage stagnation” for several years, Ramesh said, “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.”
The Parliament committee headed by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh in its report recommended that the higher education department “initiate mandatory faculty development programs to improve teaching methodologies and bridge the industry-academia gap in a structured manner.”