IIT placements 2024 fact check: Are IIT BTech placements dropping?

For the last few months, stories in the media have flagged an apparent downturn in BTech placements at IITs, causing anxiety not only among IIT aspirants but also those who want to pursue engineering in general, since IIT placements set a benchmark for other engineering colleges in India. In order to understand the ground realities and issues thereof, placement reports of BTech students of IIT Bombay for the last three academic years were studied and analysed, as a case study. Way forward Though the placements situation at the IITs is not as bad as it is made out to be, going forward, looking at the past trends and future uncertain scenarios in the global economy and industry coupled with with increasing students’ expectations, the following suggestions may be considered: Core sector placements: Considering the very purpose of setting up the IITs, it is imperative that more students should be placed in core sector jobs so that they can deploy their learnings in the jobs, at least in the first few years of their career. Novel multi-disciplinary programs and courses, embedding emerging technologies like AI in core branches, may be designed in consultation with the industry so as to enable employment of the students from conventional branches such as Aeronautical, Chemical, Metallurgy and Engineering Physics in the core sector at higher salaries. Instead, programs and courses like Financial Engineering, Business Analytics, FinTech, and Consulting Practice may be offered as minor branches and electives so that students are well prepared for those roles.