Hyderabad: Thanks to a sluggish job market, campus placements this season have been hit hard and the number of students placed and the average salaries have dropped drastically this year. The number of companies that registered for campus placements in colleges has also come down significantly.
The campus placement season is generally between November and February. With Telangana having more technical colleges, campus placements are being held mostly in engineering colleges to attract fresh talent. Majority of the companies that register for placements in colleges are from IT, ITES, management, financial services, marketing and manufacturing sectors. Ninety per cent of the 180 engineering colleges in the state are located on the city’s outskirts, covering Ranga Reddy, Medak, Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar districts. These colleges produce nearly 1.20 lakh engineering graduates every year.
However, this year campus placements were conducted in less than 50 colleges. And out of this, leading firms like Infosys, TCS, Cognizant, Wipro etc. visited just the top-25 colleges. Middle and lower-level companies visited another 20 colleges, which together placed just 10,500 students. The average salary too came down from Rs 3.60 lakh per year three years ago to Rs 3 lakh. On an average, 30 companies used to register for campus placements till three years ago, which has now came down to just 12.
However, the top-10 colleges continue to attract over 70 companies on an average. Over 95 per cent of engineering colleges are affiliated with JNTU-Hyderabad. As per data available with JNTU-Hyderabad, about 12,000 students were placed this year. This is the lowest in three years as 21,000 students were recruited in 2015 and 25,000 in 2014.
“Half of the jobs in campus placements are offered by IT companies. However, the number of jobs in these companies have been coming down significantly over the last three years due to global conditions. Besides, there used to be a high attrition rate among IT employees earlier who used to shift frequently to other companies or professions, which is not the case now. With this, the availability of IT jobs have come down, which is being reflected in fewer campus placements,” said Nimmatoori Ramesh, chairman, Telangana Engineering Colleges Association.
Though the Indian economy is growing at over seven per cent, it is not being reflected in campus placements since the availability of IT jobs have come down.
“The feedback we received from IT firms this year was that there is a drop in the availability of jobs by 20 per cent over last year. They said that they were not getting enough projects from US, Europe, Canada etc. and even a portion of existing staff had to be put on the bench due to lack of sufficient projects,” said JNTU-H professor N.V. Ramana Rao.
Admissions in tech colleges dip
The drop in campus placements over the last three years has adversely affected admissions in engineering colleges as the number of students taking admissions has been going down every year.
The government is flooded with applications for closure of colleges and closure of certain branches of engineering due to poor intake. As many as 90 colleges have not submitted fee proposals for the coming academic year, giving indications that they want to shut shop. These colleges have submitted applications to the All India Council for Technical Education and JNTU-H seeking permission for closure.
The colleges, however, need to make alternate arrangements for their students such as shifting them to nearby colleges. The government will inspect those colleges before ordering closure. Only after the government gives the NOC, the AICTE and JNTU-H will delete them from the admissions list.
“While global conditions are one of the reasons for fewer placements, the other major reason is poor standards of majority of the colleges. Barring the top 40 colleges, the big companies do not conduct placement drives in the other 200 colleges. Even in these top-40 colleges, the top-notch companies visit only the top-20 colleges. This is the prime reason for campus placement numbers falling drastically,” said Prof. D.N. Reddy, former AICTE member.
Professors say that the big corporate firms are only looking at JNTU-Hyderabad, OU Engineering College in the government sector and the top-20 private engineering colleges in the city to offer whatever limited jobs available in placement drives.
“From JNTU-H alone about 450 students and from OU about 330 students got jobs, which recorded 100 per cent placements due to higher standards. Even the top-20 private colleges witness 90 to 100 per cent placements. Majority of the other colleges conduct namesake placements by setting up their own sister concern firms, issue job letters but never honour them, while some others offer marketing jobs for salaries of less than Rs 5,000 per month,” Prof Reddy said.
