The Hindu : Front Page : ‘Stop placement programmes for third year students’

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‘Stop placement programmes for third year students’

Priscilla Jebaraj

CHENNAI: Anna University has told its affiliated engineering colleges to stop conducting placement programmes for third year students.

For students passing out in 2009, campus interviews will be conducted from June 2008. The move comes after complaints from parents of final year students to the Chief Minister’s Cell and the Anna University Vice-Chancellor. The All-India Council for Technical Education has also advised that such a ban be put in place.

In a letter to affiliated colleges on January 25, Anna University Vice-Chancellor D. Viswanathan said that the AICTE chairman and other academicians feel that “recruitment conducted to the pre-final year students is not advisable in terms of testing the domain skill and behavioural skill of the students.”

With parents complaining that final year students who were not placed in the third year are being neglected,

Dr. Viswanathan also pointed out that “it is not ethically correct to conduct campus placements for pre-final year students when the final year students are studying.”

While many premier institutions, including the government colleges, already restrict placement to the final year, there are others who have succumbed to the pressure of recruiters competing forever earlier access to the cream of the candidate pool.

“Companies are asking to come in early, because everyone wants the first slot [in the placement schedule],” says K. Jayashree, placement officer at the Jerusalem College of Engineering, which conducted placements in the third year till last year.

P. Sharmila, a current third year student of the college sums up why the practice was discontinued from her class onward: “Students take advantage of it, because after getting the offer letter, they don’t bother to study properly anymore…just enough to pass the course.”

Hail decision

Bulk recruiters welcome the move, saying that it eases the competitive pressure on them.

“Som e companies want to go in earlier. But that is doing an injustice to both the students and the organisation…This decision could not be mandated by the industry; it is good that it has been mandated by the university,” said Thomas Simon, vice-president of human resource at Tata Consultancy Services.

Mr. Simon says that “ideally, it would be good to go in the eighth semester…”

Cognizant’s HR director Sriram V. Rajagopal agrees, pointing out that the IITs have mandated placement only in the eighth semester, while most of the best B-schools conduct placement only after graduation.

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