India’s top National Institutes of Technology, (NIT) are seeing a decline in the number of women students pursuing a BTech qualification. In this article, Careers360 takes a look at the diversity – women, Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), students from other states and international students at our top NITs based on the recently released NIRF data
India’s top National Institutes of Technology, (NIT) are seeing a decline in the number of women students pursuing a BTech qualification. In this article, Careers360 takes a look at the diversity – women, Economically Weaker Sections (EWS), Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), Other Backward Classes (OBC), students from other states and international students at our top NITs based on the recently released NIRF data
Over the last seven years, the top National Institutes of Technology (NITs) have seen an overall fluctuating trend in the percentage of women students enrolled for engineering. The average percentage of female students enrolled in the top five NITs was around 21.5 per cent in 2015-16. That reduced to 19.28 per cent in 2020-21, but increased the very next and latest year to 21.1 per cent.
NIT Tiruchirappalli (NIT Trichy), Tamil Nadu, always the top-ranking college in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) engineering rankings, has been admitting fewer women until 2020-21. It improved its women presence in 2021-22 but did not achieve the best one till date.
Data on enrollment shared for ranking is made public at the time the lists are released. Careers360 analysed that data for the NITs to understand the composition of their student communities. The latest ranking, NIRF 2023, considered data for the batch that was enrolled in the four-year BTech programme from 2018 to 2022. That is the latest data publicly available.
As centrally-run public institutions, the NITs are subject to the central reservation policy. This means that most of them are unlikely to be homogenous and will have representation from historically-marginalised communities such as the Scheduled Castes (SC, 15 percent reservation), Scheduled Tribes (ST, 7.5 percent) and Other Backward Classes (OBC, 27 percent) and within these, for persons with disabilities (PWD). Seats are reserved also for the upper-caste poor or Economically Weaker Sections (EWS, 10 per cent). Seats at an NIT are also split halfway between the centre and the state where it is located. This means that 50 percent seats are reserved for students from within the state and the rest are for students from across the country.
In NIRF 2023, NIT Trichy was top ranked, followed by NIT Surathkal Karnataka – also known as NITK – NIT Rourkela, NIT Warangal and NIT Calicut. Admission to NITs is via the Joint Entrance Examination Main (JEE Main) conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA).
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The lopsided male-female ratio among engineering students was expected. What was not was the declining presence of women students over years.
In seven years, the percentage of female students decreased in NIT Trichy, Rourkela and Warangal. At NIT Calicut has the highest participation rate of women candidates over the last three years.
Women Participation in NITs (In %)
College Name | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 |
NIT Trichy | 20.30 | 18.82 | 19.01 | 19.58 | 20.60 | 22.03 | 21.89 |
NIT Surathkal | 19.32 | 17.47 | 17.00 | 17.46 | 19.13 | 20.84 | 19.16 |
NIT Rourkela | 17.79 | 17.93 | 16.53 | 17.52 | 17.53 | 18.74 | 18.59 |
NIT Warangal | 20.84 | 20.48 | 22.43 | 25.37 | 26.73 | 27.19 | 23.24 |
NIT Calicut | 27.35 | 21.72 | 22.43 | 23.26 | 24.61 | 25.70 | 24.79 |
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Given the reservation pattern of the NITs, a large section of students come from the state where a particular NIT is located. However, the average does not reach 50 per cent despite the presence of a quota. On an average, around 45 per cent students are native to the state where the college is located, the “home state”. The state domicile students participation has decreased among all the top NITs except the NIT Surathkal over the last seven years.
NIT: Home-State Students (In %)
College Name | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 |
NIT Trichy | 43.35 | 42.70 | 42.33 | 42.12 | 42.5 | 41.57 | 46.49 |
NIT Surathkal | 45.26 | 44.48 | 43.21 | 43.68 | 42.99 | 44.93 | 44.12 |
NIT Rourkela | 45.74 | 46.59 | 45.68 | 46.25 | 45.16 | 45.17 | 47.7 |
NIT Warangal | 44.83 | 45.66 | 43.81 | 39.62 | 45.98 | 39.23 | 45.45 |
NIT Calicut | 44.98 | 48.85 | 45.67 | 44.78 | 47.45 | 48.84 | 50.94 |
EWS quota is for the upper caste students whose annual family income is under Rs 8 lakh. What is not clear is how the NIRF or the NITs defined “EWS” before the definition was standardised in 2019. The NITs collect income data at the point of admission but there are impossible variations from year to year. The entries against NIT Surathkal are a case-in-point. The data suggests that the representation of EWS students rose by over 15 percentage points from 2015-16 to 2016-17 and then dropped by 16 percentage points the next year. Considering that drastic changes occur only when one batch graduates and another batch joins, and that a single batch’s composition is unlikely to undergo much change over the four years a BTech programme lasts, these figures seem impossible. The table below shows the percentages drawn from NIRF data.
NIT Calicut had the highest number of EWS candidate participation which is more than 38 per cent.
EWS Students In NITs (In %)
College Name | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 |
NIT Trichy | 11.94 | 11.2 | 10.27 | 8.22 | 6.49 | 27.50 | 4.73 |
NIT Surathkal | 25.62 | 25.7 | 23.60 | 20.39 | 11.91 | 28.89 | 13.31 |
NIT Rourkela | 15.95 | 14.1 | 2.60 | 10.43 | 10.50 | 35.56 | 6.13 |
NIT Warangal | 6.50 | 5.0 | 22.17 | 10.12 | 5.68 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
NIT Calicut | 38.03 | 19.9 | 11.06 | 31.32 | 25.39 | 25.73 | 30.48 |
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For SC, ST and OBC students, reservation is by central policy and the quotas add up to 49.5 percent of total seats. There may be variations depending on the location of the NIT but those are not visible in the top ranks. It is clear from the figures in the table below that several NITs do not have 49.5 percent representation of these groups. NIT Trichy has been the exception and NIT Rourkela has come close.
NIT: SC, ST, OBC Students (In %)
College Name | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 |
NIT Trichy | 49.64 | 48.9 | 44.54 | 47.68 | 47.74 | 47.97 | 47.37 |
NIT Surathkal | 45.16 | 44.6 | 44.19 | 43.74 | 43.64 | 43.84 | 43.93 |
NIT Rourkela | 48.22 | 49.6 | 48.37 | 48.58 | 48.63 | 47.87 | 48.83 |
NIT Warangal | 42.73 | 43.6 | 44.83 | 44.03 | 44.20 | 43.72 | 43.38 |
NIT Calicut | 45.69 | 49.5 | 51.61 | 50.91 | 50.54 | 49.27 | 44.48 |
On an average, the presence of foreign students in the total strength enrolled in these NITs has decreased from 9.36 percent to 4.01 per cent over the seven years.
Although NIT Warangal has decreased the number, it remains the top among all the NITs over the last seven years.
International Students In NITs (In %)
College Name | 2021-22 | 2020-21 | 2019-20 | 2018-19 | 2017-18 | 2016-17 | 2015-16 |
NIT Trichy | 2.83 | 2.6 | 3.24 | 3.37 | 13.04 | 12.31 | 12.20 |
NIT Surathkal | 0.85 | 0.9 | 1.13 | 1.45 | 2.12 | 2.34 | 12.45 |
NIT Rourkela | 5.04 | 7.2 | 9.17 | 7.50 | 3.55 | 8.49 | 6.98 |
NIT Warangal | 10.35 | 8.7 | 12.39 | 13.04 | 13.35 | 14.08 | 14.26 |
NIT Calicut | 0.97 | 0.8 | 0.79 | 0.96 | 0.99 | 1.16 | 0.90 |
4.01 | 4 | 5.34 | 5.27 | 6.61 | 7.68 | 9.36 |
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The number of foreign students at NIT Rourkela fluctuated dramatically over the seven years. In 2019-20, it showed a jump of 70 percent over the total number of foreign students in 2015-16, after that it sharply decreased till the latest year. As for NIT Surathkal, the percentage of foreign students has been showing a downward trend since 2015-16.
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