As many as 34,035 students have dropped out of various top-ranking higher education institutions in the country, with Other Backward Classes (OBC) topping the list at 25%, followed by Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST), the Union education ministry informed the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday.

According to data shared by Minister of State (MoS) Subhas Sarkar in response to a question in the upper House of Parliament, the maximum number of dropouts is in Postgraduate and PhD programmes.

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“The main reasons are offers for career placements in public sector enterprises and personal preference for better opportunities elsewhere. The dropping out in undergraduate programmes is attributed to withdrawal due to filling wrong choices, poor performance, personal and medical reasons,” said Sarkar, in his written reply.

He further said that institutions have initiated a number of corrective measures to minimize the number of dropouts, which include appointment of advisors to monitor the academic progress of students, provision of additional classes for academically weak students, peer-assisted learning, counselling to de-stress students, psychological motivation and extracurricular activities.

AT IITs

At premier tech institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), a total of 8,139 students dropped out in the 2019-2023 period. The number of dropouts has been the highest in 2020-21, when educational institutions were forced to shut down and shift classes in online mode amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of dropouts in 2021 was 2,411, while it was 2,152 in 2020. This figure stood at 1,746 in 2022 and 320 (till June) this year. The pre-pandemic year, 2019, saw 1,510 students dropping out.

The matter of high dropout rate at IITs was also discussed during the IIT-Council meeting held at Bhubaneswar this April, where IIT-Kharagpur was asked to compile the number of students dropping out across 23 IITs and submit a report.

AT IIMs, NITs, IISERs & IIITs

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) saw 858 students dropping out during this period.

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The number of students dropping out at the National Institutes of Technology (NIT) was 5623, central universities (17,454), IISER (1,046) and Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) (803).

At NITs, the number of students from minorities dropping out has been consistently high since 2019, data showed.

There are 45 central universities in the country under the purview of the University Grants Commission (UGC).