Engineering · India · 2026 India Skills Report · PLFS · published fee structures

The real package

Your college puts an average package on the brochure. The median engineering graduate aged 22 to 26 who actually has a job takes home ₹28,000 a month. Pick your setup and find out how long the real number takes to pay the degree back.

Coaching years counted Drop years counted Brochure checked
Brochure says
—
average package advertised
Graduates actually earn
—
median, employed, age 22–26
That brochure figure is at
—
of what graduates really earn

The bill

—

—

Where the brochure sits

Distribution of monthly earnings for employed engineering graduates, with the advertised package marked
Curve modelled from two published points — the median and the 90th percentile

Paying it off

You start underwater: coaching fees, then college fees, nothing coming in. The line climbs once you're earning. Zero is the day the degree has paid for itself.

Net position over time, on the advertised package and on real graduate earnings
If the brochure were true What the data says

Nobody prints this

—
1.8×
India's NIRF-ranked engineering colleges together claim 1.8 times more entry-level ₹6 lakh placements than the whole country has such jobs — after every reported salary was already cut by 20%.
11.2%
Unemployment among Indian graduates, against 3.1% nationally. A degree makes you more than three times as likely to be unemployed as the average worker.
₹50k
Monthly pay at the 90th percentile for an employed engineering graduate aged 22–26. Nine in ten earn less than this.

How this works

The arithmetic

Every preparation year charges the coaching cost. Every college year charges a quarter of the four-year total. Nothing comes in during either. From graduation the engineer earns the chosen salary basis, rising 8% a year, since early-career salary growth in India runs well ahead of general wage growth.

Payback is the first year total earnings cover total cost. Everything is pre-tax, in nominal rupees, and education loan interest is left out, which would push payback later.

Where the numbers come from
  • What graduates earn — analysis of Periodic Labour Force Survey data: ₹28,000 a month is the median for an employed engineering graduate aged 22–24, and ₹50,000 is the 90th percentile. Of employed engineering graduates, 58% work in software, earning ₹32,600 a month.
  • Employability by branch — India Skills Report 2026 (Wheebox and ETS). Computer science scores 80% and IT 78%; engineering overall is 70.15%, down from 71.5% in 2025.
  • Graduate unemployment — PLFS Annual Report 2025, released by the National Statistical Office in March 2026: 11.2% among graduates against 3.1% nationally.
  • Placement claims — reconciliation of NIRF-ranked colleges' reported placements against the national supply of entry-level jobs at that salary.
  • Fees — published 2026 fee structures. State government colleges run ₹8–13 lakh over four years including hostel; premium private deemed universities exceed ₹30 lakh.
  • Coaching — published 2026 institute fees. Kota or a metro branch with hostel runs ₹3.5–5.5 lakh a year once food, travel and books are counted; online coaching runs ₹40,000–1.5 lakh a year.

Branch employability marked ≈ is estimated inside the published spread rather than taken from a specific figure. The percentile for the advertised package is modelled by fitting a lognormal curve to the published median and 90th percentile, so read it as an estimate of position, not a measured value.

What this leaves out on purpose

Part-time work and internships. Education loan interest. Tax. The enormous gap between an IIT graduate and a tier-three college graduate, which a national median flattens. Scholarships and fee waivers. The fact that people who clear entrance exams differ from those who don't in ways that would show up in their earnings anyway.

It also treats a degree purely as a financial instrument, which is the one thing it certainly is not.