Rs 30 lakh for an IIT degree. What if the job you paid for never comes?

For generations of Indian parents, the IIT dream came with an unspoken promise. Crack JEE, get into an IIT, survive four years of engineering, and a good job will be waiting. Maybe Rs 15 lakh, maybe Rs 25 lakh, maybe several times more.But that assumption doesn’t stand with all surety anymore.A post on X by entrepreneur Kanthaswamy Balasubramaniam started the latest debate. His company was hiring, and two applications arrived from BTech graduates of IIT Kanpur and IIT Guwahati, both asking for around 11.2 million Japanese yen a year, roughly US$70,000.He asked what many of us were thinking: don't these guys get massive packages? A second post by him went further. His shortlist now had eight IITians, all willing to work in Japan for about US$70,000 a year and to sign a five-year non-compete on top. He called it bonkers and said India's job market must be facing a downturn.Now two things are worth keeping in mind. His table does not say how many years of experience the applicants have, so some could be freshers and some seasoned engineers. And the salary itself is not low. Converted directly, it is about Rs 67 lakh, and a rough cost of living adjustment puts it nearer Rs 35 lakh to Rs 50 lakh in India. While this is a budgeting estimate and not an official figure, what does stand out is how many candidates were willing to accept a five-year lock-in to get a job abroad.Also, the replies to the first post were revealing. One person joked that the two earlier applicants must be "5 pointers". Balasubramaniam said their CGPAs were 7.3 and 7.7, adding that they were not exactly the best of the lot.Another commenter pointed out that the median IIT graduate never sees the crore-plus package in the headlines. This is important because crore-plus salaries for IITians become the public image of the IIT degree, while the typical graduate’s far more ordinary salary disappears from view.Such a view reframes the discussion from individual “failure” to a structural mismatch between perception and the actual distribution of outcomes.WHAT RS 30 LAKH BUYS AT THE BOTTOMFor many families, the investment begins well before campus -- four years of JEE preparation can cost Rs 3–6 lakh through classroom coaching, or substantially more with Kota-style boarding and living expenses, while a four-year IIT degree adds another Rs 9.5–11 lakh.For a student using local coaching, the total can therefore approach Rs 15–20 lakh; for those who relocate for coaching, repeat attempts, or incur other living costs, it can climb closer to Rs 25–30 lakh.At IIT Bombay, that investment pays back quickly for most students who receive offers. The institute’s 2024-25 annual report shows 705 of 1,422 accepted offers above Rs 20 lakh, with a median CTC of Rs 20 lakh; only 18 accepted offers were below Rs 8 lakh.Even the 77 offers in the Rs 8–10 lakh band would recover a Rs 30 lakh all-in investment in roughly three to four years of gross annual pay.Data from IIT Bombay placement report 2024-25:Indicator2024-25Students registered for placements2,469Students who participated2,040Accepted offers1,422Placement rate among participants69.7%Average CTCRs 26.45 lakhMedian CTCRs 20 lakhOffers above Rs 20 lakh705Offers below Rs 8 lakh18Offers in the Rs 8–10 lakh band77International offers65–78, depending on the report’s counting methodThe report however counts offers and not students, and IIT Bombay is a top campus. The real risk sits with students who get no offer at all, and at newer IITs where the numbers are weaker.Those students show up in RTI replies obtained by IIT Kanpur alumnus Dheeraj Singh -- 8,000 students across 23 IITs or around 38% of students were still unplaced at the end of the 2023-24 season, up sharply from about 3,400 in 2022.At IIT Delhi, 1,083 of 1,814 registered students had been placed by April 5, 2024, leaving 731 without offers. Some later found jobs or chose higher studies, and these are mid-season snapshots.Data from Dheeraj Singh’s RTIs on IIT placements 2024:Indicator202420232022Students registered for placements~21,50020,00017,900Students placed~13,41015,83014,490Yet to be placed~8,0904,1703,410Share unplaced38%21%19%Median CTCNot disclosed in the 2024 RTI summaryRs 17.1 lakhRs 17.2 lakhIITs publish medians and highest packages but not a clean bottom quartile, so nobody can say exactly how many families land here. A family that spent Rs 30 lakh on a seat and ends the season with no offer has the worst return of all. (AI-generated image) THE IITIAN WILLING TO TAKE ANY JOBOther stories are harder to smile at. A Reddit post by a 23-year-old IIT graduate with a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering recently went viral after she said she was struggling financially, had been asked to leave home, and was willing to work as a live-in maid while she searched for a job.Writing that she had money for only a few days and needed immediate employment and temporary shelter, she said she was ready to start work at once rather than hold out for a role that matched her qualifications. The now-deleted Reddit post The post has now been deleted, and it is only an individual case proving nothing about IITians as a group; yet it is a reminder that a famous degree, however hard-earned, cannot fully protect a young person from a bad hiring cycle, or from circumstances no qualification was designed to solve.22 COMPANIES, A TWO-YEAR BANThen there is the placement season itself. The IITs have decided to stop cooperating with 22 companies for the next two seasons after more than 150 offers for the 2026 batch were reportedly not honoured across 23 campuses. Oracle alone is said to account for around 40.For a final-year student, an offer letter changes everything. They stop applying elsewhere, they turn down other offers, and their parents start planning around the salary.At IIT Hyderabad, students picked by Oracle in December had stepped out of the process under the one company rule, then came back late, after the best recruiters had finished. (AI-generated image) THE JOB MARKET HAS CHANGED UNDER THEIR FEETTechnology companies are cutting jobs and using AI for tasks that used to go to freshers. Oracle reduced its workforce by roughly 21,000 over the past year.Tech professional Kunal Kushwaha made this point last year when he advised referral seekers to lead with what they had built and not with "I'm an IIT alumnus."It is not only an Indian story. A July report citing Le Monde described Alan Yang, a 23-year-old Stanford graduate who applied to hundreds of companies without a single interview and received AI-generated rejection letters.Back home, India is producing graduates faster than suitable graduate-level jobs. It adds roughly 9.5 million graduates to the workforce each year, while 13% of graduates are unemployed; among graduates in their early twenties, more than a third are jobless (as per PLFS 2023-24). (Photo: Getty Images) WHAT THE DEGREE STILL GIVES YOUNobody is arguing that an IIT graduate is unlucky. An IIT seat is still a privilege in the Indian job market, and the placement systems remain among the strongest in the country.But a degree cannot guarantee a salary, and the cost, competition and expectations attached to a seat make transparent placement data and dependable offers essential. The biggest package announced on campus is a poor measure of what most students will earn.Think of the parents who told the whole neighbourhood about the offer letter. None of this is a reason for JEE aspirants to stop dreaming about IIT. The degree can give you a head start. But when even an accepted offer can vanish, the tag alone cannot carry a whole career.- Ends