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A report submitted by a standing committee of parliament has noted an “unusual” decline in placements in the IITs to the tune of over 10 percentage points in 2023-24 against 2021-22. This should cause concern in an adverse employment scenario. Similar declining trends have been noticed in the IIITs and the NITs. The figures provided by the committee show that the decline was seen in all the 23 IITs, except IIT BHU. The drop was steep in Dharwad IIT: from 90.2 per cent to 65.5 per cent . Only three IITs – Jodhpur, Patna and Goa – recorded over 90 per cent placements. Major IITs have never witnessed such a situation except in times such as the Covid period.
The committee noted that there could be various reasons for this decline like students opting for higher education or pursuing startup ventures. Some students may be inclined to go for non-technical careers like the civil services. But it also noted that more students showed up for placements in all the IITs, other than the one in Tirupati. Placements depend much on market trends and therefore, the decline might be indicative of a slowing demand in the job market. This is not a good trend in an expanding economy, especially because IIT students are the most employable technical graduates in the country. There was an increase in placement percentages in 2021-22 but that was the result of the recovery after the setback during the Covid period. Placements have seen continuous declines after that. The global economic slowdown was also a factor, and salary packages have become smaller. Some IITs are planning to adopt special programmes to attract more placements. They may also have to redesign their curricula to meet the demands of the time. The government’s employment programmes should take into consideration the problem of declining placements. If the best institutes find it difficult to secure placements for their students, the situation in the other colleges could be much worse. The committee has recommended mandatory faculty development programmes to improve teaching methodologies and bridge the industry-academia gap in a structured manner. A higher number of vacancies in faculty positions in the IITs should be seen in this context.
The committee also flagged the country’s low spending on education. It said the total spending on education as a percentage of GDP declined from 1.07% in 2014-15 to 1.02% in 2021-22. This is a retrograde trend – the committee has called for increased spending as envisaged in the New Education Policy (NEP).