More than 32,000 students dropped out from higher education institutions, including central universities, IITs, NITs and IIMs between 2019 and 2023, according to the Education Ministry.
More than half of these dropouts were from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Class categories. Further, a majority of these students were in postgraduate and PhD programmes, revealed the data shared in the Rajya Sabha.
Replying to a question in the Upper House of Parliament, Union Minister of State for Education Subhas Sarkar said the maximum number of dropouts were reported in central universities (17,454), followed by IITs (8,139), NITs (5,623), IISER (1,046), IIMs (858), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (803), and Schools of Planning and Architecture(112).
According to the data, 52 per cent of the 32,186 students who dropped out were from Scheduled Caste (4,423), Scheduled Tribe (3,774) and OBC (8,602) categories.
The dropout in undergraduate programmes is attributed to wrong choices filled, poor performance and personal and medical reasons, Sarkar said.
In postgraduate and PhD programmes, offers for placement in public sector enterprises and personal preference for better opportunities elsewhere are the major reasons behind the students dropping out, he said.
“Higher education institutions have initiated a number of corrective measures to minimize the dropouts, which include appointment of advisors to monitor the academic progress of students, provision of additional classes for academically weaker students, peer-assisted learning, counselling to de-stress students, psychological motivation, and extracurricular activities,” he added.
Comments
0 comment