The Reality Of Civil Engineering Placements At The IITs; Only 57% Students On Average Secures Offers!

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Choosing between a course and a college can be a challenging task for engineering students. More often than not, this choice is influenced by the myth that tier-I colleges like IITs and NITs are always the better choice, irrespective of the course you’re doing there.  

The stories of high CTCs distract aspirants from the fact that even the IIT placements vary from course to course and not everyone gets settled with a mind-boggling CTC after 4 years. Moreover, a certain percentage of people from each batch does not get placed even in courses like B.Tech in Computer Science Engineering.   

Also read: IIM Placements 2022 Shifted Gears; Top B-Schools Had To Refuse Company Offers (as no one was left to get hired)    

To put things in perspective, in IIT Guwahati, only 37% of the students got placed in Civil Engineering while about 90% from B.Tech in Computer Science engineering secured offers.   

However, even more starkly, the data revealed that Civil Engineering at IITs is witnessing consistently low placement year-on-year for some time now.    

A Quick Summary Of What The Data Reveals

• The percentage of IIT students who don't get placed despite registering for the placements stands at 23%.
• Among all the batches, the lowest placements have been recorded in the Civil Engineering branch.
• Data from only 10 out of 13 IITs are available while the rest either could not provide data or do not have Civil Engineering courses. 
• The data reveals that only 57% of students from the Civil Engineering course at IITs who registered for the placement managed to secure offers.
• At IIT Delhi Civil Engineering the placement rate was only 66% in 2020-21, compared to the overall placement rate of 86%.
• In IIT Gandhinagar Civil Engineering only 42% of the students managed to get placed.
• As per the report, IIT Patna is the worst performer with only 30% of Civil Engineering students getting placed.  

A Detailed Analysis Of Civil Engineering Placements

Consistently Low Placements

According to a report by The Economic Times from 2018, Civil Engineering has been witnessing consistently low placements since 2012. The report cited data released by AICTE to show that between 2012-13 to 2015-16, only 38% of students in Civil Engineering got placed.   

The AICTE data contains information on engineering courses from all colleges and not just the IITs. However, when compared with the IITs, there is not much difference in the data about Civil Engineering placements.   

Although, in some of the IITs Civil Engineers have recorded better placement numbers. For instance, in IIT Kharagpur, Civil Engineering the placements were clocked at 71%, which is significantly higher than the newly established IITs. A similar trend was also visible for IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur.   

Lower Salary Compared To Other Courses

On top of the low placement rates, the Civil Engineering students at the IITs have been witnessing lower salaries as well. Even though one or two students register CTCs with more than INR 20 LPA, most of them end up getting just above INR 10 LPA. Some Civil Engineering students from the IITs even recorded CTCs less than INR 6 LPA.   

Also read: IIT vs Branch: Why do IITians Compromise On The Branch To Get The IIT Tag?  

Data shows that while the average salary across all courses at the IITs was recorded at INR 15.6 Lakh, for Civil Engineering students it was only INR 11 LPA. The concern rises further as one looks at the data from each of the IITs individually.   

The lowest salary for Civil Engineering students at the IITs was recorded at IIT-ISM Dhanbad at INR 5 LPA. IIT Patna was the second-worst with INR 5.6 LPA as the lowest package offered to a Civil Engineering graduate.  

Among the best performers was IIT Madras where Civil Engineering graduates got an average salary of INR 17.3 LPA. For the rest of the IITs, Civil Engineering grads got between INR 9 to INR 10 LPA.   

The Reasons Behind Low Salary

The exact reasons behind the low placement rates and salaries for engineering graduates are hard to determine. However, a few plausible reasons can be found from different sources.    

The Importance of Experience

One of them is the importance of experience in the field of Civil Engineering where field experience is prioritized over everything else. As Civil Engineers, the ability to deliver successful projects while working on construction sites is the most important element of the profession. As a result, the salaries of Civil Engineers tend to get better only after they gain significant experience.   

Low Demand For Civil Engineers

Another reason is the low demand for Civil Engineers in the industry. Even though there are many construction projects ongoing in India and abroad, they require only a few Civil Engineers to get the job done. Due to this, a large number of Civil Engineering freshers end up not getting securing placements.  

A Restricted Stream

Besides, Civil Engineering is a restricted field where candidates have very limited options to change streams. While a Computer Science Engineering graduate can work in multiple domains, Civil Engineering grads have to stick to large-scale construction, which is already a saturated market.   

Summing Up...

Civil Engineering placements, as well as salaries across institutes, are low but that does not mean it’s an obsolete field. Most Civil Engineering graduates who do not get placed in the college find alternative routes which may begin with an apprenticeship followed by a full-time job. The salaries also tend to rise as one climbs the ladder of experience.   

However, the low placements are a cause of reflection for the engineering institutes. There is evidence to wonder if changes in the course structure and curriculum are necessary to navigate this situation.   

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