Fall in enrolment of differently-abled students in top notch institutes: survey

There has been a marginal decline in the percentage of differently-abled students in top notch institutes, such as IITs and IIMs, from 0.63 per cent in 2014 to 0.56 per cent in 2015, says a survey by the National Centre for Promotion of Employment of Disabled People's (NCPEDP) on the status of disability in higher education.

This year (2015) is no different where we saw that, out of a total of 1,521,438 students, only 8,449 were students with disabilities….Out of these disabled students, 74.08 per cent were male and 22.70 per cent were females, said Javed Abidi, Director, NCPEDP, here on Saturday.

Abidi said it was a big reason for worry that despite a law, only 0.56 per cent students are enrolled in higher education, adding that private institutions were the “biggest culprits”.

The NCPEDP wrote to 250 institutions, out of which over 150 responded, including IITs, IIMs, top medical, law, arts, commerce, design, journalism, hotel management colleges among others.

According to the survey, the largest number of disabled students (46.67 per cent) who reached the higher education level had orthopaedic disabilities, followed by the visually impaired (32.13 per cent), speech and hearing impaired 5.16 per cent and students with other disabilities 16.05 per cent.

Majority (99 per cent) students with orthopaedic disability preferred to go in for medicine, followed by architecture (62 per cent) and business management (56 per cent). Courses that had the least number of such students are hotel management (7 per cent), design (16 per cent) and social work (20 per cent).

Students with visual impairment/blindness preferred courses such as science, arts and commerce. “There are zero per cent visually impaired students in hotel management and only 1 per cent in medicine,” said the survey.

Speech and hearing impaired students constituted only 5.16 per cent of such students, opting for streams, such as design and architecture.

The maximum number of students with other disabilities (including learning/mental disability) was enrolled in hotel management (62 per cent), design (40 per cent) and social work (35 per cent). No student under this category is enrolled in medicine, the survey noted.

Gender-wise, female students with disabilities faced double discrimination, with 22 per cent of them enrolled in universities, whereas in IITs only 9 per cent and in IIMs 16 per cent were females.