Jairam Ramesh.
| Photo Credit: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA
Citing a recent report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, the Congress on Tuesday raised concern over “large-scale stagnation in job markets”.
The panel, headed by senior Congress MP Digvijaya Singh, had flagged an “unusual decline” in placement of students at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and the National Institutes of Technology (NIT) between 2021-22 and 2023-24, and asked the Centre to address the reasons behind this drop.
Commenting on the report, Congress general secretary and MP Jairam Ramesh said 22 of the 23 IITs recorded a decline in placements in this period. “The drop was over 10 percentage points at 15 IITs. In 2021-22, 90.43% of B.Tech. students at IITs who appeared for placements were placed – in 2023-24, only 80.25% of the students secured jobs. Twenty-three of the 25 Indian Institutes of Information Technology witnessed a drop in the placement in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22. Sixteen of them saw a decline of over 10 percentage points,” Mr. Ramesh said in a statement.
He said 27 of the 31 NITs recorded a fall in average salary packages offered to engineering graduates between 2022-23 and 2023-24. “Three of these institutes saw the average package decline by over ₹3 lakh per annum. In the same years, the number of students placed at 31 NITs also dropped from 18,957 to 16,915, a decrease of 10.77%,” he added.
The IITs are the nation’s premier institutions for engineering, with the most competitive admissions processes that attract the best of faculty and students, he said. “Engineering is moreover considered to be among the most marketable of all degrees. If one-fifth of the engineers at IITs are unable to find jobs, it raises concern over how the larger population of educated youth in this country is able to secure employment. Indeed, the fact that NITs and IIITs are also seeing a decline in placements points to a large-scale stagnation in job markets,” he added.
He said the fall in the average salary package secured by engineers graduating from the NITs pointed to a stagnation in salaries. “The placements data proves – once again – that these crises are not just afflicting the informal sector and the rural population alone but are causing distress even in our most elite educational institutions,” he said.
Published – April 15, 2025 09:56 pm IST
