Student enrolments went up by 7.5% in 2020-21, All India Survey on Higher Education data show

Source: The post is based on the following articles:

“Ministry of Education releases All India Survey on Higher Education(AISHE) 2020-2021” published in PIB on 29th January 2023

“Student enrolments went up by 7.5% in 2020-21, All India Survey on Higher Education data show” published in The Hindu on 30th January 2023

What is the News?

The Ministry of Education has released the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-2021.

What is the All India Survey on Higher Education(AISHE)?

The AISHE survey has been published by the Ministry of Education since 2011.

The survey covers all higher educational institutions located in Indian Territory imparting higher education in the country. 

The survey collects detailed information on different parameters such as student enrollment, teacher’s data, infrastructural information, financial information etc. 

For the first time, in AISHE 2020-21, HEIs have filled data using an entirely online data collection platform through the Web Data Capture Format(DCF) developed by the Department of Higher Education through the National Informatics Centre(NIC).

What are the key findings of the AISHE 2020-21 survey?

Higher Education enrolment: Enrolment in higher education has increased by 7.5% in 2020-21 from 2019-20, with female admissions increasing from 18.8 million to 20.1 million in this period.

– Since 2020-21, the year when the COVID-19 pandemic began, there was a 7% rise in enrolments in distance education programmes.

Female Enrolment: Female enrolment in higher education programmes had increased to 49% of total enrolments in 2020-21 compared to 45% the previous year.

– The highest enrolment was seen at the undergraduate level which accounted for 78.9% of all enrolments followed by postgraduate level courses, which accounted for 11.4% of the year’s total enrolments.

Popular courses: Among all undergraduate enrolments, the most popular remained the Bachelor of Arts programmes which saw 104 lakh enrolments (52.7% women; 47.3% men) followed by Bachelor of Science courses where women outnumbered men.

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER): The GER in higher education has increased to 27.3 from 25.6 in 2019-20. GER is the ratio of 18-23-year-old adults attending college to the total population. It has been calculated according to the 2011 census. 

– Female GER has overtaken Male GER since 2017-18. Gender Parity Index (GPI), the ratio of female GER to male GER, has increased from 1 in 2017-18 to 1.05 in 2020-21.

Social groups: The overall enrolment percentage of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class(OBC) students in higher education institutions have increased notably from 2014-15 to 2020-21, with ST students registering nearly a 50% growth.

Universities: During 2020-21, the number of Universities has increased by 70, and the number of Colleges has increased by 1,453.

Rajasthan hosts the maximum number of universities in India followed by Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.

Teachers: The number of teachers increased across higher education institutes but still SC and ST teachers continued to be under-represented. 

– The survey also found that there were 75 women teachers for every 100 male ones across institutes in the country. 

– The teacher-pupil ratio was at 27 for all universities, colleges and standalone institutions and at 24 if only regular mode is considered. The best teacher-pupil ratio was found in States like Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.