Better placements add sheen to polytechnic colleges in district

Coimbatore: Polytechnic colleges in the district have been seeing a good trend in placements for the past few years.
Principals of polytechnic colleges said of late, more and diverse companies have been coming to recruit polytechnic graduates as they have better skills owing to the extensive practical exposure in the three-year course.
The Government Polytechnic College in the city, which had seen only around 50% placements earlier, has over the past two years seen full placement, principal S Vairam said.
He said several mechanical companies sought out polytechnic students as they are skilled in machine operations. Engineering graduates are more suited for white collar jobs and skilled labour such as plumbers and electricians are produced by industrial training institutes.
“So, manufacturing industries, whose operations depend highly on CNC machines, seek diploma holders from polytechnic colleges,” he said.
As the curriculum of diploma courses are practical-intensive and are split 50% theory and 50% practical, students get skilled in areas such as CNC machine operation.
Vairam said the placement cell of the college actively took steps to bring in more recruiters, which had also contributed for the good placement record over the past two years. All the 400 final-year students had been placed last year. The highest salary offered was Rs 50,000.
Similarly, the Government Polytechnic College of Women, Coimbatore, has been seeing good placements, college principal S B Chandran said.
“Recruiters particularly seek students from diploma courses in modern office practice and garment technology,” he said. Graduates have been offered salaries up to Rs 35,000 and on average they are offered Rs 12,000, he said.
Private polytechnic colleges in the district too have been seeing a good demand from recruiters, say principals. Principal of Sri Ramakrishna Polytechnic College B L Shivakumar said last year recruiters had come with more number of offers than the college’s student strength.
“Usually more offers would come from mechanical engineering companies. But this year there have also been offers from computer companies for software and back-end jobs and companies seeking instrumentation and control engineering students,” he said.
As Class XI too has board exams now, a lot of students opt to study polytechnic courses and get a lateral entry in the second year of engineering courses, say academics. However, students should choose good polytechnic colleges which have necessary infrastructure and provide good exposure, Shivakumar said.