Saturday, May 04, 2024

IIT Placement Woes Continue As Institutes Struggle With High Numbers of Unplaced Graduates; RTI Reports Reveal

Free Press Journal: National: Saturday, 4 May 2024.
An RTI filed by Dheeraj Singh, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and the founder of Global IIT Alumni Support Group reveals the discrepancies in the number of students getting placed in the institutes over the course of years.
The placement season continues to haunt the Indian Institute of Technologies (IITs), with over hundreds of students remaining unplaced throughout the course of four years. The placement season which officially began in December 2024 in various IITs in the country is nearly at the brink of their completion. However, a RTI filed by Dheeraj Singh, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and the founder of Global IIT Alumni Support Group reveals the discrepancies in the number of students getting placed in the institutes over the course of years.
As claimed by Singh, 500 students are yet to be placed out of the 1,600 students for the academic year 2023-24 in IIT Kanpur as of April 29, 2024. This means that 31.3% students are yet to secure a placement so far.
While, if we tally the last year’s, that is, 2022-23 placement report of IIT Kanpur, it is revealed in the RTI reply that 167 students were left without a job in hand out of the 1362 students who registered for the placement session. And in the year preceding this, that is, 2021-22, around 177 students remained unplaced out of the 1391 students.
Whereas, in the year 2020-21, 322 students were unplaced out of 1135 students, according to the RTI report.
Similar pattern is noted in the numbers of IIT Kharagpur, wherein, according to the RTI report, 815 students remained unplaced in the 2022-23 session out of 2490 students who registered. This translates to 33% of the students who did not secure a job.
Then, in the academic year 2021-22, 641 students were unplaced out of 2256 students, as per the report.
The RTI response was given by the Career Development Cell of the institute.
The situation is dire in IIT BHU as well, wherein almost 692 students remain to be placed out of 1735 students as per the RTI report. While, in the academic year 2022-23, 336 students remained unplaced out of 1428 registered students, which is revealed by the report.
The report also revealed that it is not just old IITs which are facing this issue, IIT Ropar has 93 students waiting for their placement out of 298 students. In the academic year, 2022-23 the institute had 49 unplaced students out of 281 of those who registered.
Similarly, in IIT Palakkad, 16 students remained unplaced in the 2022-23 academic year out of 211 registered students as per the report.
The RTI report revealed that in IIT Jammu, 125 students are yet to be placed out of 251 registered students this year. While, in the academic year 2022-23, 33 students remained unplaced out of 220 students.
FPJ reached out to IIT Kanpur, IIT Kharagpur, IIT BHU, IIT Palakkad, IIT Ropar and IIT Jammu through mails, however, till the publishing of this copy, no response was received.