The Indian Institutes of Technology have decided to stop cooperating with 22 companies, including US software major Oracle, for campus recruitment for the next two placement seasons after more than 150 job offers made to students graduating in 2026 were not honoured. The decision marks a coordinated response by the IITs to a growing problem that has left students scrambling for jobs after being effectively taken out of campus placement processes once they secured offers.
The decision was taken by the All IITs Placement Committee (AIPC), the central coordinating body for placements and internships across the institutes, at a meeting at IIT Guwahati earlier this month. The committee plans to formally inform the companies by September 30, though it has deliberately chosen to describe the action as “non-cooperation” rather than blacklisting.
Over 150 offers affected
More than 150 offers across all 23 IITs were affected, with some recruiters failing to honour between 10 and 15 offers each. The final company-wise list and the precise number of affected students are still being compiled as individual IITs submit updated information to the AIPC.
The committee had set September 15 as the deadline for companies to onboard students to whom they had made offers. With several recruiters failing to do so, the IITs have now moved to keep them outside their coordinated campus recruitment system for two placement seasons.
AIPC convenor and IIT Guwahati associate professor John Jose said the committee would communicate its decision to the companies by September 30. Unlike last year, when individual IITs approached defaulting recruiters separately, the action this time is being taken collectively through the AIPC.
The scale of the problem has also increased. Around 10 to 11 companies had failed to honour offers last year, compared with 22 companies identified this year, making the latest episode the most serious in recent years.
Oracle among biggest cases
Oracle is among the companies expected to face the two-year restriction, with campus sources indicating that around 40 offers made by the technology company across IITs were not honoured. The company has also not approached the IITs for recruitment so far this year.
Earlier reports on the withdrawals indicated that Oracle had revoked offers across several leading engineering institutes, including IITs and NITs, amid restructuring and headcount-related challenges. Some affected candidates had secured full-time roles or pre-placement offers and consequently stopped participating in other campus recruitment opportunities.
That has made withdrawn offers particularly disruptive because many premier institutes follow a “one student, one job” policy. Once a student accepts an offer, he or she may be removed from the institutional placement pool, leaving limited options if the employer subsequently withdraws the job.
Several startups are also understood to be among the 22 recruiters facing action, although the AIPC has not publicly released the complete list. The committee is waiting for the latest status reports from individual institutes before finalising the details.
IITs try to find fresh jobs
Placement offices have simultaneously been trying to help students whose offers were withdrawn. CVs of affected graduates have been circulated among existing recruiters, with companies asked to consider them for available positions outside the regular placement process.
Around 20 to 30 per cent of the affected students are estimated to have secured alternative employment through such cross-referrals. The IITs, however, do not yet have a consolidated figure for the number of graduates who remain without jobs.
The institutes had earlier attempted to resolve the problem without imposing restrictions. In June, the AIPC asked companies that had revoked or failed to honour offers either to take the students on board or compensate them with three months’ salary, warning that failure to resolve the cases could result in exclusion from future campus recruitment.
The committee subsequently gave companies additional time to complete onboarding before moving towards collective action. The latest decision indicates that those efforts failed to resolve a significant number of cases.
Recruiters face credibility test
The two-year restriction comes as another IIT recruitment cycle gets under way amid cautious technology hiring and uncertainty surrounding entry-level jobs. Recruiter registrations generally begin around September, followed by final placement drives later in the year.
For the IITs, the issue extends beyond the immediate employment prospects of the affected graduates. Campus placement systems depend heavily on students being able to treat a formal offer as reliable, particularly when institute rules prevent them from pursuing another position after accepting one.
By acting collectively against the 22 companies, the IITs are seeking to strengthen accountability in a system where a withdrawn offer can leave a graduating student with little opportunity to return to the campus recruitment process. The two-year “non-cooperation” period will now prevent the affected recruiters from accessing the IIT placement system even as the institutes work to find alternative opportunities for students left without jobs.