IITs go all out to enrol more girl students

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are going the extra mile to enrol more women students into their undergraduate programmes.

While 15 of the 23 IITs have set up special help desks for woman students who qualified the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), Advanced-2017, IIT-Mandi has launched a special web portal to guide and advise them on a range of issues. The institute has also created a Facebook page to answer their queries.

Some woman students have also shared their experience while studying at an IIT in an effort to attract those who have qualified JEE-Advanced.

The initiative came after the government mandated the elite engineering colleges to increase the number of women students across all the IITs as their percentage continues to remain very low when compared with that of the boys.

Of the nearly 4,570 woman students clearing JEE-Advanced last year, just 800 joined the IITs. The gender ratio in the last batch across the IITs is a woeful 8%.

“The percentage of woman students at IITs remained low last year due to various factors. One of the main factors was that woman students opted for limited choices during counselling,” an IIT faculty told DH.

Other factors include the parents’ reluctance to allow their daughters to take admission at an IIT which is far away from their hometown. “Our initiative this year aims at addressing these issues,” the faculty added. The IIT-Delhi last week hosted an open house session for woman candidates who qualified JEE-Advanced.

The session was conducted by woman faculty, students and alumni. The IITs, which have decided to create 4% supernumerary seats for woman students from 2018, have a total of 10,962 seats to fill up at the undergraduate level.