A calculation was made of the total number of students of all the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) who dropped out of their courses in the past two years. It was found that the dropouts were mostly at the postgraduate level. A total of 2,461 students have dropped out of all IITs taken together in the last two years. This translates to just 1.37 per cent of the total annual strength of 90,000 of all the 23 IITs, including the seats of all the courses.
Last week, in the parliament, a question was raised pertaining to the dropout rate. The Union Minister of Human Resource Development (HRD), Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, answered the question and told that the maximum dropouts were from Ph.D (doctorate) and postgraduate programmes. There can be many reasons for these students dropping out of the course like shifting to other colleges, medical issues, personal reasons, receiving placements during the PG course, aiming for higher education abroad, etc.
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Pokhriyal said that the dropping out of undergraduate courses is attributed to withdrawal of admission due to the poor academic performance of the student, wrong choice filling, medical or personal reasons. He addressed the issue and told the Rajya Sabha.
Dropouts of IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur comprised about 50 per cent of the total number. In the last two years, 782 students dropped out of IIT Delhi and 622 students dropped out of IIT Kharagpur. An official of IIT Delhi said that the main issue is that state-owned companies declare their selection of candidates for after the academic session has begun. The bulk of IIT dropouts are students pursuing postgraduation who join these state-owned firms. He also said that the institute is discussing with the HRD to find a solution to the problem.
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It was also noticed that 99 students dropped out of all Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) during the same period. This was identified from the data of the HRD ministry.