Choosing PSU jobs over MTech hampers research: IIT-B faculty

MUMBAI: Research suffers and Indian Institutes of Technology aspirants lose out when MTech students leave their course midway for public sector undertaking (PSU)

MUMBAI: Research suffers and Indian Institutes of Technology aspirants lose out when MTech students leave their course midway for public sector undertaking (PSU) jobs, said Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) faculty.

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Of the 72,000 students enrolled at 23 IITs in the country, around 14,000 are MTech students.

According to a professor from the electrical engineering department at IIT-B, 40% to 45% students from the department end up leaving the MTech course midway.

“These students block seats, which would have otherwise be allotted to those who want to study at the institute. The MTech programme is for those who want to do research,” he said.

According to the faculty at IIT-B, for many students, the MTech course is a means to find better employment opportunities, rather than it being an opportunity to study and research at one of the premier institutes in the country.

“There are three categories of students who desert the course for a job in the PSU. They include: those who plan to get a job at PSUs, but are studying MTech only as a back-up plan; those who take up a job as they are unable to handle the pressure of academics at IITs; and those who end up accepting a job offer owing to family pressure ,” said a second-year MTech student at IIT-B, on condition of anonymity.

Admissions to the IIT MTech programme take place through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), the score for which is also considered by PSUs for recruitment.

“We don’t want to waste a year if we don’t get a job,” said a first-year MTech student at IIT-B, who is also eying a PSU job and is willing to leave the institute if he’s offered one.