In the last five years, 13,626 students have dropped out of central universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), and Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) who belonged to the historically marginalized Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes (SC, ST, OBC), Union minister of state for education minister Subhas Sarkar informed Parliament on Monday.

The data was submitted in answer to a query from BSP member Ritesh Pandey in the Lok Sabha concerning the government's estimation of the total number of students who had left CUs, IITs, IIMs, and NLUs over the previous five years.

In the case of CUs, Sarkar said that as many as 4596 OBC, 2424 SC, and 2622 ST students dropped out in the last five years; in the case of IITs, 2066 OBCs, 1068 SC, and 408 ST students dropped out; and, in case of IIMs, the figures were 163, 188, and 91 for OBC, SC and ST students, respectively.

No such data is available for national law universities or NLUs.

“NLUs have been established under the Acts enacted by the respective state legislatures and as such they are the state universities. No such data on dropout students of NLUs is maintained by the Central Government,” Sarkar said in his response.

Sarkar explained the potential cause of the dropout rate, stating that students have a variety of options in the higher education sector and may decide to switch between institutions as well as between courses or programmes within the same institution.

“The migration/withdrawal, if any, is mainly on account of securing seats by the students in other departments/institutions of their choice or on any personal ground,” he said.

In response to a follow-up question about what the government was doing to address the problem, Sarkar stated that to help students from low-income backgrounds continue their education, the government had taken several steps, including fee reduction, opening more institutes, providing scholarships, and granting priority access to national scholarships.

“For the welfare of SC/ST students, schemes like ‘waiver of tuition fees in IITs’, grant of national scholarships under Central Sector Scheme, scholarships in Institutes, etc. are also there,” he said.

According to Sarkar, institutions have established mechanisms including equal opportunity cells, grievance cells, student grievance committees, student social clubs, liaison offices, and liaison committees to proactively handle any issues related to SC/ST students.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) also issues instructions from time to time to promote equity and fraternity among students, he said.

Image source: PTI