Telangana girls skip IITs, NITs
70-75% of parents are reluctant to send their daughters outside the city.
Hyderabad: Top-rated engineering colleges such as IITs and NITs see fewer women in the student population. Of the 2.21 lakh students who passed the qualifying Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) in 2017, only 46,160 were women.
Career counsellors say that parents of female students from the Telugu states prefer their children to appear for EAMCET (engineering) entrance and thereafter do a B.Tech in government or affiliated colleges in their respective cities because they don’t want to send their daughters to other cities where there are safety and other issues.
IIT-JEE coaching centres also have a larger proportion of male students, but coaching centres for medicine, science, arts and commerce have more girls. Medical coaching centres have more female students and consequently higher female enrolment is observed in undergraduate medical courses.
R. Subadhra, a career counsellor, said, “I have seen many cases where parents didn’t allow their daughters to go out to study even when they were very capable of studying in IITs and NITs. At least 70 to 75 per cent of parents are not willing to send their girls out of the city. In some cases even boys are not sent out of station these days.”
Sasidhar Bhandari, an IIT expert, says, “South Indian parents are not willing to send their daughters for undergraduate courses to North India due to security and other reasons such as ragging. “In our institute the ratio of boys and girls is 70:30, so it is evident that fewer girls are opting for engineering courses.”
He adds that when his daughter got admission to NIT Roorkee “we did not opt for Roorkee for security reasons and also due to food habits, and because transport connectivity from Roorkee is difficult. The North Indian mentality is also very different from ours so we preferred KMIT Hyderabad, so that she will be near us and she will get food of her choice here.”
Kumar Veeramallu, dean of Chaitanya Junior College, agrees that top- rated engineering colleges always have fewer women. “This is a general tendency. JEE is the toughest examination in India and some girls may not be interested in taking such a tough programme. If you see, the top ten ranks in JEE are mostly held by boys. When it comes to medicine, we see more girls.”
He adds that “probably to increase the number of women in top rated engineering colleges, the HRD ministry is planning to give extra seats for women in NITs. But this is not a good idea as it will deprive the boys of opportunities. If they increase reservation for girls, a girl with 70 per cent has more chances of getting a seat than a boy with 80 per cent. This is depriving boys of opportunities. Instead, they should increase the number of seats in general. If there are 100 seats now, they should increase it to 120 seats to accommodate more girls.”