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NEW DELHI: Business schools are struggling hard for placements with only 20 per cent students landing job offers, making this placement year the most challenging in recent times, according to Assocham .

The chamber observed that job opportunities for business school (B-school) students are drying on account of factors like demonetisation, lacklustre business sentiment and stalling of new projects.

"Grim placement scenario is reflected in B-school campus hiring this year which has gone down severely than last year which was 30 per cent. The salary packages which are offered at B-schools and engineering colleges are also being curtailed by 40-45 per cent as compared to last year," Assocham said.

The Assocham Education Council (AEC) said many parents and students are re-thinking on investing three-four years and several lakhs in a course. More than 400 institutions have become defunct as they are not getting enough students to be viable, said the chamber.

As per its findings, a large number of B-schools and engineering colleges are not able to attract students. More than 250 B-schools have already closed down since 2015 in major cities including Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Dehradun etc. Another 99 are struggling for their survival, reveals the report.

The biggest reason for the gap is the rapid mushrooming of tier-2 and tier-3 management educational institutes that have unfortunately not been matched by the uplift in the quality of management education, said the chamber. The root cause of the problem is that institutes only focus on filling up seats and do not consider the quality of students at the time of intake, it said.

Assocham has suggested to improve the infrastructure, train their faculty, work on industry linkages, and spend money on research and knowledge creation and making students employable rather than employed.

