IITs not to reveal salary figures from this placement season

Kharagpur (West Bengal): Country's premier technical institute, the IITs have decided not to reveal any pay package figures from this placement season following complaints of peer and parental pressure on students.

"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, said.

A decision to this effect was taken recently at a meeting of All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC) in Guwahati. "We had this rule of non-disclosure earlier also but this time we took a conscious decision to implement it," Barai said.

The first phase of placements began at the IITs from Tuesday.

So far the IITs used to reveal packages but kept identity of the students a secret.

"We have noticed that only the highest salary is discussed. But people forget that the average salary which an IITian gets is far less than the fattest one," Barai said.

Another issue lies with the employers as many of them have a confidentiality clause in their job contract which restricts them to publicly disclose their remuneration.

"Some multinationals will complain to us if we disclose the figures and breach the confidentiality clause," the placement in-charge of IIT-Kgp said.

In some cases, security and safety of the passouts and their families could be another cause of concern as they might even get kidnapped for a ransom, he feared.

"All the figures from any IITs being discussed in the media this season is unauthenticated as none of the premier engineering institute can disclose figures," Barai said.

Recently an IIT-Kgp student had disclosed directly before the media that he bagged an annual package of Rs 2 crore from Google after finishing internship. "We can't stop students from making any disclosures on their own," the IIT official said.

There are 16 IITs in the country.