IITs refuse to disclose top salary packages in placement reports, citing high expectations

On January 4, IIT-Bombay stated that 85 students received pay packages worth more than Rs 1 crore out of a total of 1,340 offers given during the college’s first phase of placements.

Later, IIT Bombay published a corrigendum blaming a “technical error” and reduced the number of Rs 1 crore-plus offers to 22.

This IIT Bombay placement report was discussed during the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) meeting. It was found that Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are considering not reporting the highest yearly salaries in their placement reports.

Disclosure of salary packages may have an influence on mental health

All 23 IITs’ heads of career development, training, and placement cells are members of the AIPC. The group meets at regular intervals to discuss recruitment experiences and issues.

The AIPC members were concerned about the IIT-Bombay placement report, considering the possible impact of disclosing the best placement data on students, particularly in a year marked by general dampened hiring sentiment owing to a tech downturn.

Such reports may also raise unrealistic expectations in parents and have an influence on students’ mental health.

According to the Indian Express, Professor Debjani Mitra of IIT ISM Dhanbad, this year’s AIPC chairperson, stated that there was an agreement not to disclose the top salaries. Instead, the emphasis would be on average and median pay numbers.

At the next AIPC conference in February, the IITs are likely to agree on standard rules for the dissemination of placement reports.

“Majority of these (crore-worth) offers are international offers, and people often forget that while looking at the figures. This can negatively affect students’ mental health, so we requested IIT-Bombay, and other IITs too, to not share any information on CTC in the public domain. This is very personal information that should stay between the candidate and the employer,” added another AIPC member.

Sameer Jadhav, faculty adviser to IIT-Bombay’s placement committee, told the Indian Express, “We have to remember that these are outliers. About 20 to 30 students (out of the hundreds who sit for placement) get such offers. This creates a very skewed perspective of what IITs can deliver and gives rise to unrealistic expectations among students and their parents. Students feel a lot of pressure during campus recruitment, and we (IITs) are trying to see if disclosing just the mean and median salaries is the best approach.” 

This is not the first time that there have been concerns about not publicising wage packages in IITs. The same was determined during an AIPC conference in 2015.

“Disclosing salaries puts unnecessary pressure on students. It kickstarts peer pressure as well as parental and societal pressure. People forget that only very few of them actually get those fat pay packages of over a crore. The minimum and average salaries are much less,” stated that the minimum and average earnings are significantly lower.

However, no specific regulations were established regarding the publication of placement reports.

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