CHENNAI: Amid the craze for computer-related courses, six core engineering courses — electrical and electronics engineering (EEE), mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, production engineering, printing technology and ceramics technology — at Anna University’s four campuses have recorded 100% placement for the 2025-26 batch. Five of these core engineering programmes are offered at College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG), while ceramics technology is offered at Alagappa College of Technology (AC Tech).Pay packages vary from Rs 46 lakh a year to Rs 4 lakh a year for these courses. EEE recorded the highest average pay package, with students getting Rs 9.75 lakh-a-year salary offers. Courses such as mining in CEG and production engineering at Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) have got placements for all eligible students except one each.Experts attribute the growing demand to the revival of the manufacturing sector, with semiconductor and electronics industry requiring more freshers.“The revival of the manufacturing sector including automobile and electronics have resulted in a good placement season for many core engineering branches this year,” said K Shanmuga Sundaram, director, Centre for University-Industry Collaboration, Anna University.Anna University also teaches artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science for core engineering students, he added.“Core engineering will be an advantage in the AI era. As institutions embed AI into core engineering curricula, students with strong domain expertise will have multiple career pathways. The industry is steadily moving beyond prompt engineering toward specification engineering, where deep understanding of the problem domain becomes the real differentiator,” said K M Suceendran, head, Academic Alliances Group, TCS.Some experts said the core courses record 100% placement due to less intake. “CSE and related branches carry far larger intakes, so the percentage settled at 80% to 90% in many institutions. But this year, core demand has grown, with semiconductor, electronics manufacturing pulling freshers into active hiring and on many campuses, core recruitment is moving faster than IT services hiring,” said Ganesh Thirunavukkarasu M, founder of UniqShift Ventures and campus hiring strategist.In the four campuses of Anna University — CEG, MIT, AC Tech and School of Architecture and Planning — computer science engineering students received the highest pay with Rs 53 lakh-a-year offer from Microsoft this year. The students also received the highest average pay package with Rs 19.5 lakh a year. Despite the higher intake, branches such as computer science engineering and information technology at CEG and MIT placed close to 90% of their students. AI and data science, electronics and communication engineering and electronics and instrumentation courses at MIT also recorded good placements with more than 85% of students placed.
