IITs Keen Not To Disclose Pay Packages In Placement Report, Citing Unrealistic Expectations

On January 4, IIT-Bombay revealed that out of a total of 1,340 offers made during the first phase of the placements at the college, 85 students were offered salary packages of more than Rs 1 crore.?

Later, IIT Bombay issued a corrigendum citing a "technical error" and revised the number of Rs 1 crore-plus offers to 22.?

This IIT Bombay placement report was part of discussions at the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) meeting. It was revealed that the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are considering not disclosing the highest annual packages in their placement reports.?

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Apart from IIT Bombay, other IITs also disclose highest salary packages.?

Disclosures of pay packages could impact mental health?

The AIPC includes heads of career development or training and placement cells of all 23 IITs as members.?The body meets at regular intervals to share their recruitment experiences and problems.?

The IIT-Bombay placement report was a matter of concern for the AIPC members, given the potential impact the disclosure of highest salary figures could have on students, especially in a year marked by overall subdued hiring sentiment due to a tech slowdown.?

Such reports could also lead to false expectations among parents and impact students' mental health.?

Presents' skewed perspective of what IITs can deliver

Professor Debjani Mitra of IIT ISM Dhanbad, chairperson of AIPC this year, confirmed that there was a consensus on not disclosing the highest salary packages, the Indian Express reported. Instead, the focus would be on mean and median salary figures.

At the next meeting of AIPC in February, the IITs are expected to agree upon common guidelines for release of placement reports.?

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"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," said another AIPC member.?

The Indian Express also quoted Sameer Jadhav, faculty advisor to IIT-Bombay's placement committee: "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."?

Not the first discussions to stop pay package disclosures?

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This is not the first time that discussions have been held on not disclosing pay packages in IITs. In 2015, a meeting of the AIPC decided on the same.?

"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," Prof Sudhirkumar Barai, Chairman, Career Development Centre at IIT Kharagpur.?

However, no specific guidelines were set on the release of placement reports.??

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