Civil Engineering: 10 IITs Placed Only 57% BTech In CE Students In Jobs In 2020-21

The choice between a course or the college has been one of the important choices that students make. In most cases, when it comes to an admission in any of the premier engineering colleges – Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), National Institutes of Technology (NIT), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) and several others – many students chose to study in the IITs and NITs.

However, data says that the decision may be wrong, if you are not choosing the right branch in an institution that doesn’t see top companies recruiting students. It is a myth that a student of IIT has secured their career, no matter which branch they study in. Data from 13 IITs shows that 23 percent of IIT graduates are not placed even though they registered to be a part of the placement process. This report will specifically deal with placements in BTech in Civil Engineering. This also specifically deals with the placement reports of IITs, NITs and IIITs and based on replies to Right to Information (RTI) applications filed by Careers360. Some institutions have been excluded from the report for data insufficiency but a broad sense of the placements does emerge which can be extrapolated to placements across the IITs and NITs.

Placement data of 2020-21 for the Civil Engineering branch was compiled. A few colleges did not share their data – or the data was miscalculated or unclear – and some did not offer Civil Engineering. They were excluded from the analysis here.

Among the all four core branches- chemical, civil, mechanical and electrical engineering. , Civil Engineering seems to have one of the lowest placement records of students in both IITs and NITs. Of the 13 IITs for which we have data, only 10 shared data that can be used for the right comparison. But this is sufficient to draw an inference.

Civil Engineering Jobs: What The Data Shows

Analysis of data from 10 engineering colleges for Civil Engineering and 13 IITs for overall placement revealed wide disparities in placement rates and average salaries between overall achievement and Civil Engineering.

Only 57 percent of Civil engineering students were placed from those who actually registered for placements. Some branches which had lower placement rates also had lower registration rates. If we look at placement of students from the number enrolled, only 43 percent were placed. The table below gives the absolute numbers and percentages.

Engineering Jobs: A large chunk of Civil Engineering student did not participate in placements

In all, 328 Civil Engineering students sought placements and 142 could not be placed. Of the 437 students enrolled, 251 were not placed – by IIT standards and student expectations, this is very high.

There are similarly wide gaps between an institution’s average salary and the Civil Engineering graduates’. The average salary across the 10 IITs was Rs 15.6 lakh. However, for Civil Engineering students, it was Rs 11.10 lakh. That is about 30 percent lower than the average salary across all the branches.

Civil Engineering: Placement Rates Compared

Overall, the 13 IITs together placed 77 percent of the students, 20 percentage points more than the 57 percent placement of Civil Engineering students at the 10 IITs.

With the exception of IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur, this was the trend in every IIT considered individually. The gap between average and Civil Engineering placement rates was widest at IIT Patna – a startling 38 percentage points – but of 20 points or more at eight of the IITs. At two, including Patna, it was over 30 percentage points.

BTech Placement: Civil Engineering In IITs

In their individual placement rates for Civil Engineering, IIT Patna performed the worst with only six of the 25 students enrolled being placed. IIT Madras had the best record with 30 of the 49 enrolled students placed.

The table below shows the number of students enrolled and registered and the placement rates (in percentage) computed out of the number of enrollments as well as the number or registrations for placement.

IIT BTech In CE Placement In Numbers

Curiously, the section of students registering for placements in the core engineering branches is also low. For example, at IIT Guwahati, 83 out of 87 students enrolled in BTech in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), registered for placement and 78 were ultimately placed. However, in the case of Civil Engineering, of the 71 students enrolled, only 53 registered for placement (75 percent) and 27 were placed. Of the total enrollments in the branches, 37 percent were placed in Civil Engineering and about 90 percent in Computer Science.

IIT Hyderabad (Image: IIT Hyderabad)

This trend of students registering for placement falling in branches where placement rates are lower continues across all IITs and NITs. For example, in the case of NIT Trichy, while 98 students were enrolled, only 70 registered for placement and only 53 or 54 percent of those enrolled in Civil Engineering were placed.

Civil Engineering Jobs: Average Salary

The difference doesn’t stop just at the number of students placed. It also extends dramatically into average salary. For instance, at IIT Guwahati, while the average salary across branches is about Rs 19 lakh and students of Computer Science Engineering averaged Rs 29 lakh, the Civil Engineering students were placed at an average salary of Rs 13 lakh.

If we compare all the IITs for which data is available, the Civil Engineering students were placed as given in the table below. The variance can be as high as 50 percent.

IIT Civil Engineering Salaries

The widest gap between the overall average salary and that of Civil Engineering in an institution was at IIT Patna, followed by IIT Hyderabad. While IIT Patna had an overall average of Rs 13.10 lakh, its CE branch had an average of Rs 6.1 lakh. In the case of IIT Hyderabad, the overall average was Rs 20 lakh while CE students bagged an average of Rs 10.7 lakh.

The best record was again IIT Madras’ – an average package of Rs 17.3 lakh, which is actually better than the average salary across different branches of engineering at IIT Madras – Rs 17.10 lakh. In fact, IIT Madras is the only institution where the average salary of the CE branch is better than the average across all branches. This could be because one student of IIT Madras was placed at a salary of Rs 52.50 lakh – the highest salary for any Civil Engineering student.

Civil Engineering: Maximum, Minimum Salary

The range of salaries offered for Civil Engineering again varied widely across the IITs.

The lowest minimum salary offered was Rs 5 lakh at IIT-ISM Dhanbad, followed by Rs 5.16 lakh at IIT Patna.

State University

One state university's placement records were analysed to understand whether the trend extends to the regional level. Data from the following three colleges of Anna University, Tamil Nadu, were analysed:

• College of Engineering (CoE), Anna University;
• Madras Institute of Technology
• Alagappa College of Technology

Of them, only CoE offered Civil Engineering as a branch and this is what was found:

• In all, 89 students from Civil Engineering opted for placement. Of these, 47 were from English-medium and 40 were from Tamil-medium.
• In all, seven students of Civil Engineering (English) and one student from Tamil-medium were placed.
• The average salary was Rs 4.58 lakh for English-medium candidates and Rs 4.4 lakh for the lone Tamil-medium student.
• In comparison, The of the 283 students from Computer Sciences who opted for placement, 235 were placed. Even the average salary was Rs 9.22 lakh and Rs 7.26 lakh in two of the colleges.