Are Engineering College Placements Correlated with Programs

This is a question that I have been thinking for a very long time. Why should average salaries for graduates of mechanical engineering, be higher than average salaries for graduates of, say, metallurgy. Is there something about mechanical engineering that market values more than metallurgical engineering. (I am just taking two random examples, nothing specific about them.) This would happen if the jobs that require the knowledge of mechanical engineers pay more than jobs that require the knowledge of metallurgy. Or if we consider non-core jobs which are common today, say, finance, somehow there is something that we teach in Mechanical that is indirectly useful for those non-core jobs.

Now, if you compare the salaries offered for core jobs (that is, jobs which require training of a specific engineering discipline), one notices that CS jobs often have higher salaries, may be some jobs in Electronics and Communication have higher salaries too, but after that the core jobs don't have too much variation across discipline. And we can't really think of skills that we impart to mechanical engineers that we don't impart in Metallurgical engineers but are useful for non-core jobs like finance. In fact, all these non-core companies don't seem to discriminate across disciplines. They typically have the same eligibility (in terms of CGPA) and the salary offers for selected candidates is same irrespective of discipline.

So, it would appear that there shouldn't be any significant difference in average salaries of different disciplines, except where the core jobs pay well and that happens in Computer Science and to some extent Electronics and Communication. But there is no denying that average salaries of various programs are different. For example, we at PEC recently announced the following average salaries (in lakhs) for those who graduated in 2020 with a BTech degree.

Computer Science: 14.6

Electronics & Comm: 11.7

Electrical: 9.1

Mechanical: 7.6

Production: 7.5

Aerospace: 6.9

Civil Engg.: 6.7

Metallurgy: 6.1

 

So we dug deeper into this, and this is what we found. The average CGPA of the graduating students also declined from Computer Science to Metallurgy. We then looked at the average salaries offered vis-a-vis their academic performance (as reflected through CGPA). And this is what we noticed:

 

9.0 - 9.5: 17.0

8.5 - 9.0: 11.3

8.0 - 8.5: 10.6

7.0 - 8.0: 8.9

6.0 - 7.0: 7.1

(Too few students in 9.5+ and <6.0 to be statistically significant)

 

One notices a much stronger linkage between CGPA and salary than between department and salary. if one sees the salary of folks with similar CGPA, the numbers are perhaps no longer statistically significant, but the spread is less (and again mostly due to CS/ECE) and students get similar salaries irrespective of their departments.

 

 This is, of course, on expected lines. As we started by saying that the difference between salaries should be either based on some core jobs paying higher, or non-core jobs valuing some part of training in some disciplines higher. With very few students outside CS/ECE taking up core jobs, there is no reason for salary differential.

So basically what is happening is that Mechanical students have higher average CGPA compared with Metallurgy and that is the primary reason for their better salaries, not their intrinsic mechanical training.

Why do they have higher average CGPA? A few things cause that to happen. One, the higher JEE rankers prefer Mechanical (in the mistaken belief that there is something about that training that gives better placement). That would put a small advantage in terms of CGPA (because the difference in the input quality is frankly not that diverse given that a few marks in JEE means a large difference in ranks). Second, the branch change based on their performance in first semester (or first year, as the case may be) ensures that those who perform really well in the less popular programs shift to more popular programs, and that really affects the average CGPA of a department. The third impact comes from motivation. People who join less popular programs are constantly nagged about it. They are told that they would have been better off if they had joined the more popular department in some other college. That demotivates them and causes reduction in their academic performance.

So the bottom line is that there is no statistically significant difference between the salaries offered to graduates of different engineering disciplines (except where core jobs are well paid and in plenty, which is currently true for CSE/ECE). The salary will depend on your performance in their test/interview, which will be impacted by how much you have learnt, your academic preparation. So, in this admission season, don't worry about discipline and join a good college.

No, it does not mean CGPA is the only thing in life. If you have done well in non-academic areas, you will still get a good job. But most people with poor CGPA also don't do well in other areas. So, please focus on learning and your interests (if any) and not worry about which degree will give you better salary.