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As per IIT Delhi’s 2018 placement report, 854 candidates who registered for placements while 373 companies came for campus recruitment. Contrary to the popular notion that computer science and engineering graduates are most in demand, it was textile engineering which had the maximum job offers (11%). Among the participating companies, Intel (32) made the maximum offers followed by Goldman Sachs (23) and Samsung Research Bangalore (22).

Also, some 2,000 students bagged much-coveted international internship offers, with Samusung Research leading the way with 21 offers.

Patriot asked IIT Delhi Director Prof V Ramgopal Rao to explain why the gap between IITs and lesser engineering colleges.

What is the reason behind all the IITians getting easily placed while the students of lower-tier universities struggling for the same? Is it about the infrastructure/ teaching faculty/ students?

Not just one, but all the three elements are equally important when it comes to the placements. Students may be of similar quality compared to the other universities but faculty quality goes up steeply in IITs. Alas, everything comes with its own limitations, even in IIT’s we are facing problems to get professors for core areas like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Block Chain.

Is there any minimum attendance criterion for appearing in exams?

At the institutional level there is no such criterion and attendance is solely left to the faculty. Some professors don’t require any minimum attendance at all while some make it compulsory.

What can be done to improve the current situation of mushrooming of engineering colleges in India? Even a student with 50% score in class 12 has the luxury to get admission in a private engineering college. Do you think this is justified? Would you blame the parents?

Would blame none but the kind of people who are given the authority to allot the credentials to the institutions. In a market economy like ours, we are seeing colleges which haven’t been able to attract students are closing down, so market forces determine whether a college will survive or not.

Engineering was one of the best ways to avail jobs easily back in 2000s, but today students are tilting more towards courses like law and mass communication, so it is just a matter of time when a particular course becomes popular and masses get attracted to it.

It is the ‘Survival of the Fittest’, so we should just wait and watch how this trend of engineering goes, how many of them close down, how many will survive. As a country, we need to uproot the problem by keeping a check on the grants given to engineering colleges in India by AICTE.