Placements drop to 52.3% at Chandigarh’s Punjab Engineering College

Amid the ongoing placement drive at Punjab Engineering College (PEC), only 52.3% students have managed to secure jobs — a major drop from 83.4% last year.
A total of 661 eligible students from the 2023-24 session had registered for placements, but only 346 (52.3%) students have landed jobs so far. More than 150 companies are participating in the drive.
At 90.7%, an even higher number of students were placed in 2022, up from 83.4% students in 2021. Officials said while the placement season was still underway, most of the big companies had wrapped up with their placements at PEC.
Apart from this, both the highest package and the average package amount offered to students in the 2023-24 session have also seen a significant slide, as per data shared by PEC.
This year, the highest package (lakhs per annum) offered to a PEC student is ₹58.9 lakh, compared to ₹83 lakh last year. Similarly, the average package offered has dropped from ₹15.9 lakh to ₹14.5 lakh between the two years.
Speaking about why this happened, PEC director Baldev Setia said, “This is a trend that reflects the market more than it does the institute. Even premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) like IIT Bombay haven’t been able to get their entire batches placed this time.”
He added that PEC, being a public institution, also had the duty to keep the not-so sought after branches of engineering running. However, PEC had recently started new courses like engineering in artificial intelligence, for development of semiconductors and even an MBA to keep up with the market’s demands.
CSE student fetches highest package from Uber
The top package — ₹58.9 lakh package offered by Uber — was secured by a student from the computer science engineering branch.
This was followed by an annual package of ₹52 lakh, offered by Microsoft to an electrical engineering student and ₹42 lakh package, offered by Arcesium to an electronics and communications engineering student.
Officials of the career development and guidance centre of PEC said although hiring in consulting, management and analysis roles was slowing down, hiring in operations, production, sales and core roles was rising. Though the average CTC offered to circuital students had declined, that offered to non-circuital students had surged by 10-40%, they said.
Officials added that although there were fewer offers this year, there has been a 40% increase in the percentage of offers in core profiles and 60% rise in the percentage of offers in the finance sector. Offerings in operations were three times higher this placement cycle than that in a usual year. The number of students placed in product development services was also four times higher.
341 internships offered to students
As many as 341 on-campus internship offers were also secured by PEC undergraduates with the highest stipend of ₹1.5 lakh per month being offered by DE Shaw. With a monthly remuneration of ₹1.25 lakh, 16 students were awarded internship positions with Microsoft. Seven PEC students received offers from Goldman Sachs, with a monthly compensation of ₹1 lakh. Another 84 students bagged on-campus internship opportunities with a stipend range of ₹75,000- ₹1.5 lakh in contrast to last year when there were 59 students in this category. Earlier this year, a total of 123 pre-placement offers were made to students on the basis of internships.