Mumbai: Students pursuing degree-level courses in fields like communication, banking and marketing have questioned why campus placements are limited only to IITs and IIMs.
They said that even though colleges claimed that they would have placement drives after the final semester, most city colleges failed to keep their word and students felt the need to “go out of their way” to get job opportunities after college in the absence of placement or recruitment drives.
This year too, the Mumbai University (MU) initiated a placement cell on campus for students and for the same, an annual budget of Rs 570.30 crore was allotted for the academic year 2018-19. However, the situation in colleges remains the same, the students rued.
Talking to Asian Age, an ex-student of Somaiya Vidyavihar revealed how there was just one company on the day of placement. “We students were looking for a financial sector company (banking jobs) however, the one company which came offered a position in sales. None of us was interested so after college, we had to make our own way. The college gave us the reason that none of the banks were ready to come as they did not want freshers,” he said.
Meanwhile, students of St. Andrews College, Bandra, claimed not to get “any good” company during their placement days. “Our professor advised us to go out of the way and try for internships or jobs during and after our degree courses and not depend on jobs (placements) to come to us. In our final year, we got companies who offered us jobs which weren't even our field of interest. Like marketing students got branding or designing jobs or journalism students got jobs as social media managers or banking students in advertising firms,” said an ex-student.
Janice Shenoy, a post-graduate student in a south Mumbai college, said, “There are so many companies wanting to recruit students from the IITs and IIMs or other technical institutes. But for creative courses, we do not have anything in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses.”
