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Comment by janiman21 | Hacker News Reader

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I know very little about the caste system, but it does strike me as odd that only 1 in 180 professors is from a group representing 50% of the population. It becomes even more suspicious if there's a quota for admissions as you say. At some point between admission and tenure, there seems to be a great filter.

How do you explain that, if not for discrimination?

Not so much deliberate as just being a matter of supply, from what I understand.

> “teachers and mentors specialising in science are rare in the rural high schools attended by these students, especially Adivasis,” Sonajharia Minz, a computer scientist and vice-chancellor of Sido Kanhu Murmu University in Dumka, was quoted as saying.

That would make sense, except it was mentioned elsewhere on this thread that there is a 50% quota for OBC people at IITs.

Are you saying that OBC are so far behind their peers at the time of admission that only 0.6% (1 in 180, as mentioned in OP) of those 50% manage to catch up academically?

That's really hard for me to believe.

Does it also strikes you odd that asians represent far more percentage in IT jobs than their representative population? it can be explained in number of ways, mostly immigrant population, self selected population that is privileged to have money to come overseas, culture of emphasis on education than rest of the population etc.

So while striking odd part is correct. Assuming that only explanation is discrimination is incorrect in my opinion.

This is a strange comment. You're pretending I hold some opinion about the participation of Asians in the IT sector in the US, and then proceed to explain why that opinion is wrong, all the while never answering my question about the topic at hand.

For reference, the comparison to Asians in the US job market seems misplaced.

From the numbers I found, the representation of Asians in admissions, industry and faculty seems to line up pretty accurately. They represent 10-11% of STEM students, 13% of STEM workers, and 11% of STEM professors. I didn't find detailed numbers for IT specifically.

On the other hand, according to what was written in this thread, OBC people represent 50% of IIT students, but only 1/180 or about 0.6% of IIT professors.

i was giving you example where data would give you the impression that something is odd but there are reasonable explanations for its oddity.

| For reference, the comparison to Asians in the US job market seems misplaced. | I didn't find detailed numbers for IT specifically.

It would be good to share the sources since you already did the hard work of finding them so that we can scrutinize it as well.

OP is claiming 50% of population of india and not IIT students.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37333418

Reply on news.ycombinator.com