A Comparative Analysis of the Return on Investment of an IIT Education: Evidence from the 1980

  • Unique Paper ID: 191996
  • Volume: 12
  • Issue: 9
  • PageNo: 40-44
  • Abstract:
  • This paper examines the return on investment (ROI) of an engineering education at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by comparing two graduate cohorts: those who completed their degrees between 1980–1990 and those between 2000–2010. Using inflation-adjusted estimates of education costs and post-graduation earnings, the study evaluates how the economic payoff of an IIT degree has evolved over time. The analysis incorporates tuition fees, living expenses, opportunity costs, and early-career earnings to compute payback periods and medium-term ROI multiples. The results suggest that while absolute earnings increased substantially for later cohorts, rising education costs and changing labor-market conditions altered the relative returns to an IIT education.

Copyright & License

Copyright © 2026 Authors retain the copyright of this article. This article is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

BibTeX

@article{191996,
        author = {P Himashree Perumalla and Tejas Anand and Suravi Reddy and Vaivaswat Verma and Rajkumar G R},
        title = {A Comparative Analysis of the Return on Investment of an IIT Education: Evidence from the 1980},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {12},
        number = {9},
        pages = {40-44},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=191996},
        abstract = {This paper examines the return on investment (ROI) of an engineering education at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) by comparing two graduate cohorts: those who completed their degrees between 1980–1990 and those between 2000–2010. Using inflation-adjusted estimates of education costs and post-graduation earnings, the study evaluates how the economic payoff of an IIT degree has evolved over time. The analysis incorporates tuition fees, living expenses, opportunity costs, and early-career earnings to compute payback periods and medium-term ROI multiples. The results suggest that while absolute earnings increased substantially for later cohorts, rising education costs and changing labor-market conditions altered the relative returns to an IIT education.},
        keywords = {IITs, Return on Investment, Higher Education, Human Capital, India},
        month = {February},
        }

Cite This Article

Perumalla, P. H., & Anand, T., & Reddy, S., & Verma, V., & R, R. G. (2026). A Comparative Analysis of the Return on Investment of an IIT Education: Evidence from the 1980. International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology (IJIRT), 12(9), 40–44.

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