Under 70% BTech Graduates From New IITs Are Placed Each Year

Only about 70 percent BTechs graduating from the second generation Indian Institutes of Technology are placed each year and about 10 percent go for further studies, an analysis of government data shows.

Till 2001, India had just seven IITs — premier engineering colleges funded by the central government and government by a separate law. Starting from 2008 to 2016, another 14 IITs were established and two existing engineering colleges, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and Indian School of Mines (ISM) Dhanbad, were granted the status of IITs.

Among the 16 new IITs thus formed, six were founded in 2015 and 2016 and are yet to participate in the ministry of education’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF). These are IIT Palakkad, Kerala; IIT Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh; IIT Bhilai, Chhattisgarh; IIT Dharwad, Karnataka; IIT Jammu, Jammu and Kashmir; and IIT Goa. The remaining 10 have been ranked from the first round of NIRF ranking in 2016.

Participating colleges disclose placement figures and median salaries to the ranking body. Careers360 studied ranking data over five years, 2015-16 to 2019-20, of the newest IITs to see how they fared on placements. The data for the latest year was compared with that of the oldest IITs — Bombay, Delhi, Kharagpur, Kanpur, Madras, Roorkee, Guwahati — to see how the two groups compare.

Placements At New IITs

On average, about 68 percent of the students got placed and 11 percent of the students went for higher studies from the eight newly-established IITs over the five-year period. The NIRF data does not say anything about what became of the roughly 20 percent of students who were neither placed nor enrolled in higher studies.

Over the five years, the eight colleges experienced fluctuating placement records with the percentage of students placed declining in most cases. The significant exception to this was IIT Ropar which shows an appreciable increase in placements.

New IIT Placements: Graduating BTechs Placed (In %)

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IIT Placements: Old And New

In 2019-20, the oldest IITs, which are also the top-ranked IITs on the NIRF, together averaged a placement percentage of 77.66 percent. For the same batch, the second generation IITs placed 67.3 percent. All these engineering colleges taken together had 72.1 percent placement implying that over a fourth of BTech graduates from India’s top engineering schools did not get into jobs.

Placement data is present in all NIRF submissions but no score weightage was assigned to it.IITs old and new: Placement percentage

From New IITs To Higher Studies

The higher studies graph shows very fluctuating data for all eight colleges. The change in just one year can be as high as 20 percentage points.

IIT Gandhinagar, Hyderabad, Mandi and BHU-Varanasi increased the percentage of students going for higher studies over the last five years. Elsewhere, it decreased from 2017 to 2021.

IIT Students Opting For Higher Studies (In %)

Higher Studies From IITs: Old And New

The seven established IITs have an average of 16.8 percent of students who go for further studies after a four-year undergraduate BTech programme. While the ones established since 2008 that were considered here — barring IIT-ISM Dhanbad and IIT-BHU Varanasi — average about 10 percent.

One of the oldest and most well established, IIT Kanpur ranked fourth in the NIRF 2021 but had the lowest percentage of placements with a large chunk of students opting for higher studies

Higher Studies from IITs: A comparison

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IIT Placements: Median Salary

IIT Gandhinagar has the lowest placement percentage as well as the lowest median salary over the last three years among all the IITs.

The median salary of the newly-placed at IIT Hyderabad increased sharply over the five years, by Rs 9.8 lakh, while IIT Bhubaneswar and IIT Indore almost doubled their median salary over the same period.

IIT Placement: Median Salary Per Annum (In Rs Lakh)

IIT Placements Median Salary: A Comparison

Apart from IIT Gandhinagar, all the IITs were able to reach a seven-figure annual median salary. The median salary at five of the new ones was more than that of IIT Bombay which had the lowest median salary among the older IITs. Neither NIRF data, nor RTI responses explain how IIT Bombay, ranked far higher than the newer IITs, happens to have a lower median salary. One possible explanation could be the low placement performance of some niche branches of engineering or even core branches that are no longer as popular. However, this cannot be confirmed as NIRF does not furnish branch-wise data.

Median Salary per Annum in Old, New IITs

Special Cases: IIT-BHU Varanasi, IIT-ISM Dhanbad

Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad are almost 100-year-old engineering colleges — older than the oldest IIT — which were converted into IITs quite recently, in 2012 and 2016 respectively. While they are new to the IIT system, they are not new institutions in the same way that, say, IIT Jodhpur is. Therefore, data for these two have been analysed separately. IIT Roorkee began as Roorkee College in 1847, went through several names and status changes before becoming an IIT in 2001. It has been counted among the older or first-generation IITs.

IIT-BHU Varanasi has a better placement record than even some of the top IITs. It has been able to place more than 90 percent of its students for the last four years.

As for IIT-ISM Dhanbad, the placement percentage is more than the average of second-generation IITs but less than the first generation ones.

IIT-BHU Varanasi, IIT-ISM Dhanbad: Placements (In %)

IIT Varanasi saw a decent increase in median salary over five years and IIT Dhanbad saw it jump by Rs 4.5 lakh in 2018-19. This was just two years after IIT Dhanbad was designated an IIT.

IIT Varanasi and Dhanbad: Median Salary (in Rupees lakh)

IIT Varanasi and Dhanbad show trends similar to that of the other newer IITs with regard to the number of students pursuing higher studies upon graduation.

IIT-BHU Varanasi, IIT-ISM Dhanbad: Higher Studies (In %)

The numbers of students opting for higher studies fluctuated wildly over the five years, going from close to zero percent in 2015-16 to 6.13 percent just the next years, for IIT-BHU.