The number of companies coming for campus placement to engineering and management colleges in the city has fallen by almost 75% when compared to 2012.
Some colleges have not seen a single company coming for campus placement so far. It is not just the private managements that are adversely affected as the scenario is not much different even in Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT).
To add to students’ woes, even as fees for professional courses have been hiked, there is no increase in the annual pay packets offered by private companies.
Incidentally, companies blaming “poor quality of students” coming out of engineering colleges in the city, now rather than going to individual campuses for placement are increasingly favouring district level placements. In other words, short-listed students from various engineering colleges in the city are asked to come at one common point for interview.
“Quality of engineering students is a major problem and companies are reluctant to take students from new engineering colleges. Some of the colleges have not seen a single company approaching them for campus placement. Even in established colleges, the companies coming for campus placement are not really high,” said T A Vijayan, SNG College of Engineering and secretary of Kerala Self Financing Engineering College Managements’ Association.
Last year also the recruitments were slow and in many colleges, the students who cleared campus placement are yet to get appointment letters. For example, the CUSAT students who had been placed with Wipro in the last campus placement and have already passed out will only join in December. In TCS, with which CUSAT has an MoU, the placement of passed out students is still happening in batches of 10 to 15.
So far only seven companies have approached the school of engineering for recruiting students this year. In contrast, last year 15 companies had approached the institute and in 2011, 30 companies had come. Most of the companies like last year are not interested in mass recruitments.
“In other colleges only one or two companies have come for placement. Our situation is better. There is still freeze in recruitment in the IT and manufacturing industry,” said Prem Kumar C V, faculty in-charge, placement of engineering students at CUSAT.
“Earlier companies would come for campus placement in September, but this year, so far, only four companies have come. Most companies are adopting a wait and watch approach and have indicated that they will come next year if the market improves,” added M Bhasi, placement co-ordinator of management studies.
Courtesy : Preetu Venugopalan Nair, TNN