FEBRUARY 17, 2024
Higher Education Scenario
The laggard states need to more than double their enrolments to meet the new education policy targets.
T
he All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021–22
highlights some important aspects of the progress of ter-
tiary education at the national level and in the states. As
per the report, there were 1,168 universities, 45,473 colleges and
12,002 stand-alone higher education institutions registered
with the AISHE, of which a substantial majority participated in
the survey. Together, these institutions hosted as many as 15.97
lakh teachers and 4.3 crore students, a number which is larger
than the entire population of countries like Australia, Venezuela,
Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, and Canada.
The 2021–22 survey, which is the 11th in the series, indicates a
sudden slowdown in the growth of the student population to
4.6% for the first time in four years. A major reason for this is
the slower growth of undergraduate students, especially female
students, who account for around four-fifths of the student pop-
ulation in higher education. Similarly, the number of students
doing MPhil has almost halved, while the number of PhD stu-
dents has remained almost stagnant. However, the number of
students doing post-graduation accelerated to double digits.
Surprisingly, the deceleration in the growth of the higher edu-
cation student population is not uniform across social groups. A
gender breakdown shows that it is the female students who are
most affected, with their growth rate reducing to 2.7% com-
pared to male students, whose growth rate only dipped to 6.3%.
It is also seen that the 2.2 crore male students marginally out-
numbered the 2.1 crore female students. Trends indicate that
the share of female students has dipped by more than 1 per-
centage point to 47.8% from their peak levels two years back.
Despite this setback, the growth of students from almost all the
other disadvantaged social groups shows impressive buoyancy.
While the number of both Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled
Tribe (ST) students increased by 12.4% each to 66 lakh and
27 lakh, respectively, that of Other Backward Classes (OBC) rose
by 10.2% to 1.6 crore. Similarly, the number of students from
the Muslim community increased by 9.7% to 21 lakh. This is es-
pecially gratifying since the number of Muslim students had
fallen by 8.5% during the pandemic.
Trends over the last five years show that while the share of SC
and ST students has increased by around a percentage point to
15.3% and 6.3%, respectively, that of the OBCs has gone up by
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRuary 17, 2024 vol lix no 7
2.3 percentage points to 37.8%. However, despite such gains, it
is also noted that the share of female students in all these three
social groups has decelerated in recent years to 47.9%, 49.7%
and 47.9%, respectively.
Another setback is that the share of students from the Muslim
community has fluctuated and even dipped marginally by a few
decimal points to 4.9% from their peak levels two years back.
The only positive trend in this case is that the share of female
Muslim students has gone up by over half in two of the last
three years. In fact, the Muslim and ST groups are the only two
communities where the share of female students had exceeded
that of males at least in some years.
Coming to enrolment ratios in higher education, the numbers
indicate that the overall gross enrolment ratio (GER) of 28.4% in
2021–22 is still far short of the 50% targeted in the new education
policy by 2035. However, the numbers also show that some states,
which are concentrated in the north and the south regions, are
already close to achieving the 2035 GER targets. They include Delhi
(49%), Tamil Nadu (47%), Himachal Pradesh (43%), Uttarakhand
(41.8%), and Kerala (41.3%). The states with the lowest enrolment
rate, with less than half of the top-ranking states, are generally
those with large tribal populations and include Chhattisgarh
(19.6%), Jharkhand (18.6%), Bihar (17.15%), and Assam (16.9%).
On the positive side, the numbers show that the national-level
GER is similar across genders with the female ratio even mar-
ginally higher at 28.5% as compared to 28.3% in the case of
males. It is also seen that the GER has improved by 3.8 percent-
age points over the last five years, with the numbers for both
the male and female ratio increasing by 3.8 and 3.9 percentage
points, respectively.
An equally heartening development is that the GER in higher
education is higher for females in more than 15 major states,
mainly concentrated across the north and the south. They in-
clude Kerala (14.9 percentage points higher), Himachal Pradesh
(12.4), Haryana (6.7), Punjab (4.9), Jammu and Kashmir (4.6),
Chhattisgarh (4.0), Uttarakhand (3.6), and Telangana (3.1). In
contrast, the states where the GER of females are lower than
that of males are geographically scattered and includes Madhya
Pradesh (lower by 1.7 percentage points), Andhra Pradesh (2.5),
Gujarat (2.5), Odisha (2.9), and Maharashtra (3.8).
7
EDITORIALS

But what is more distressing is that the disparities between
the general GER and that of SC and ST communities are rather
substantial. While the overall GER is 28.4% at the national level,
that of the SC is 25.9% and the ST, just 21.2%. It is also seen that
while the female GER of SC is higher than that of males, in the
case of ST, the reverse is true. However, the GER is not available
for the OBC and minority groups.
There are also significant interstate disparities in the GER of
ST and SC groups. The states with the highest GER rate among
ST communities are Goa (39.5%), Tamil Nadu (39.4%), Telangana
(39.2%), Maharashtra (36.3%), and Delhi (36.1%). In the case of
ST, the states with the highest enrolment include Tamil Nadu
(43.9%), Uttarakhand (42.1%), Uttar Pradesh (39.4%), Telangana
(38%), and Bihar (34.6%).

8 FEBRuary 17, 2024 vol lix no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly