Over 13,600 SC, ST, OBC Students Dropped Out Of IITs, IIMs, Central Universities In 5 Years

Over the last five years, a total of 13,626 students from historically marginalised Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (SC, ST, OBC) have dropped out of central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM).

According to data given with parliament on Monday by Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar, the vast majority of them dropped out of central universities, followed by IITs. In total, 3,542 students from the OBC, Dalit, and Adivasi communities who were studying at IITs dropped out in the last five years. Similarly, 9,642 students left core universities. Sarkar was responding to a question from Ritesh Pandey, a Bahujan Samaj Party member of parliament.

At their June meeting, the IIT Council addressed the issue of dropouts. IIT Madras offered a sports quota for students as a solution; the IITs are already conducting initiatives that allow students to quit with fewer qualifications along the way. Central institutions have much more undergraduate students than the IITs. Delhi University has more undergraduate seats than all of the IITs combined.