Despite slogging it out and shelling out huge fees, the slowdown has forced management and engineering graduates to abandon their hopes of getting jobs that match their qualifications.

"Students from Tier II, III, IV colleges have no choice but to look for low-end jobs like website designing, content designing, customer service agents and tele-sales agents, which may pay Rs 2-3lakh," says Bhupesh Gupta, business manager at Bangalore-based recruitment company CareerNet Consulting.

Like Manoj, MBA student Vinayak K is panicking with each passing day.

The second year management student, who had to fork out over Rs5.5 lakh for an MBA from an institute in Hubli, a small town about 420 km north of the IT hub of Bangalore, is having sleepless nights with few companies turning up at his campus for placements.

Vinayak has applied to seven companies from the financial services and IT domains, but the response has been same: We are not hiring now.

He says that a job will help him with experience, which can manoeuvre his career. "Some job is better than no job. I am ready to work without a salary, as an intern, for experience. But even that seems tough."

India has about 1,383 engineering institutes and 1,083 MBA institutes, affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education, catering to nearly 500,000 and 300,000 students respectively.

Priyanka Golikeri/ DNA-Daily News & Analysis Source: 3D Syndication