Over 15 percent MTech seats at IITs go vacant due to unsynchronised GATE based admissions, recruitment

HRD Ministry has decided to offer only relevant MTech degrees in order to put a cap on dropouts.

Over 15-20 per cent of MTech seats across Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) go vacant every year, reveals an RTI information. In the year 2018, of the total 301 students who got admission across MTech courses at IIT-Delhi, 74 students dropped out, leaving 25.48 per cent seats vacant. At the IITs in Madras and Mumbai, the number of vacant seats was 19.25 per cent and 45.01 per cent, respectively.

The seven old IITs alone had 280 vacant seats across MTech courses in 2017, 669 in 2015 and 639 in 2016. The data also highlights that the number of students completing the course and being conferred degrees is even lower.

There are over 2,500 seats available across IITs. Every year, approximately a million candidates apply for Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). One needs to crack GATE in order to secure a government job in a PSU and for admission at MTech courses. The IITs point at the unsynchronised admission process followed by the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) as the reason behind the dropouts in MTech courses.

To tackle this, IIT-Madras designed a Common Offer Acceptance Portal (COAP) in 2017 under which IITs, IISc and Central Public Sector Undertakings (CPSUs) were expected to recruit at a common platform. However, the participation of only one - Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL) was seen. While IIT-Madras is trying to bring in more PSUs on board, NPCIL is rethinking its participation.

High dropout ratio is a common problem for all PSUs and IIT admissions as everyone aims to get the top-scoring students. This leads to one student getting multiple offers while another getting only a limited or even no offers. Since one person can join only one PSU, the dropouts are high for both- IITs and PSUs. Students who are offered high paying jobs hardly opt for IITs.

Taking this into account, the HRD Ministry along with the IITs have decided to grant only relevant MTech degrees by IITs to put a cap on dropouts. “Dropouts in the middle of the programme results in wastage of the seats and denies the opportunity to other serious and meritorious students, on the other,” the ministry said.

Timothy A. Gonsalves, IIT-Mandi Director said, “It is up to the individual IITs to decide which MTech programmes to run. We will steadily increase the number of students in our existing MTech/MSc/MA programmes and will also open new programmes.”