Over 18.7k Seats In IIT, NIT, And IIIT Remained Vacant In Last 2 Years: Why Can't These Institutes Find Eligible Candidates?

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10,000 seats in IITs and over 8,700 seats in NITs were left VACANT - a huge number for all engineering aspirants who aspire to get a chance to study in their dream engineering college. But that's what was brought to the limelight by the written response of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

In a written response, data revealed that In 2021-22, the number of vacant seats in IITs was 5,296, slightly lower than the previous year. Of them, 361 seats remained vacant in BTech courses, 3,083 in postgraduate courses, and 1,852 in Ph.D. courses.

Vacant seats at IITs and NITs

For the year 2020, around 8 lakhs candidates registered for JEE Mains. Out of these, only 2.50 lakhs are selected for JEE Advanced. With an acceptance rate of just 0.5 %, IITs are notoriously famous for being one of the toughest academic institutions because of the high competition and low acceptance rate.

So, when Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan submitted his report to the Parliament about the number of vacant seats for the last two years, it came as a big shock!

What do numbers at IITs suggest?

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What came as a cherry on the cake was the fact that the seats remained vacant not only in IITs, but National Institutes of Technology (NITs), and the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) as well. 

What do numbers at NITs suggest?

“The premier engineering colleges like IITs, NITs and IIITs impart education and research in science and technology subjects and are categorized as Institute of National Importance. The admission to various programmes in these institutions are strictly offered only to deserving candidates based on the ranking/ other parameters, who fulfill the required eligibility criteria,” the statement said.

What does IIT have to say?

Officials at IITs also backed the statement. “IITs are not able to fill PhD seats because of the dearth of eligible candidates. For instance, in IIT-Delhi, we have 800 PhD seats but we could fill only up to 500. PhD is the responsibility of the facility as much as the students’. No one will accept a substandard student for PhD. It’s not a time bound programme,” said a senior official at IIT-Delhi, anonymously.

On high vacancies in postgraduate courses, the official added, “That’s because of students joining and leaving for public sector (PSU) jobs. The admission to postgraduate courses in IITs are done through GATE exam. PSUs also hire from the same GATE exam. But PSUs offer jobs after we finish our admissions, and, therefore, many students leave. The IITs have been requesting the government to do it through a common portal. Only then this issue will be addressed.”

Also read: IIT Kharagpur placement report 2021

About IITs

Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are autonomous public technical and research institutes. With 23 IITs across the nation, IITs are the powerhouse institutions which have religiously churned out dynamic students, trained by world class faculty in education and research who have gone on to make a huge impact in the world. 

IITs have ranked consistently amongst the top institutes not only in India, but in the world. Recently IIT Bombay placed 177th rank in QS World University Ranking 2022 and IIT Delhi placed 185th rank.

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