Nearly 2.5K students, mostly from reserved category, drop out of IITs in two years

In a shocking revelation, the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) informed the Rajya Sabha that above 2,400 students had dropped out of the coveted Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the past two years.

There are a total of 23 IITs in India from which a record 2,461 students have dropped out. Among them, 57 percent dropped out from IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur, reported The Hindu.

The data tabled on July 25 further pointed out that 782 students had dropped out of IIT Delhi while 622 had quit IIT Kharagpur. The number of dropouts was much lower at other IITs such as the ones in Kanpur, Bombay, and Madras, which saw 190, 263, and 128 students drop out respectively.

What was most concerning about the figures revealed was that 1,171 of the total number of students who dropped out in the past two years, which is 47.5 percent, belonged to Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Class categories.

When asked to explain a cause behind the phenomenon, V Vijayasai Reddy, the MHRD minister, said the drop-outs could be a result of basic developments such as “shifting to another college/institution, personal reasons, medical reasons, moving abroad for higher education, etc”.

The MHRD stated, “The dropout in the undergraduate programmes is attributed to withdrawal due to wrong choices filled, poor academic performance, personal and medical reasons.” It added that the premiere educational institutes were taking adequate correctional measures to “de-stress the students”.

Also, Somesh Kumar, Dean – Students Affairs at IIT Kharagpur, said there was nothing worrying about the high number of reserved category students dropping out. He explained, “The intake of students from the weaker sections in the IITs is almost 50% and if a similar number of students drop out there is nothing unusual.”