3.26 crore students in UG Courses; Bangalore leads Districts with 1058 Colleges: AISHE 2020-21
The highest enrolment among all the programmes is in Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), with 104 lakh students, of which 52.7% are female and 47.3% are male.
Since 2014-15, the Scheduled Caste student enrolment has gone up by 27.96%, for Scheduled Tribes 47.00% and for Other Backward Classes there is an increase of 31.67%. As per the AISHE 2020-21 Report Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of colleges in the Country, while among districts Bangalore urban has the maximum number of colleges in the country, which is over 1000.
The Ministry of Education released the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-2021, enrollment in higher education increased to 4.14 crore, crossing the 4 crore mark for the first time; an increase of 7.5% from 2019-20 and 21% from 2014-15. Total enrolment in higher education has increased to nearly 4.13 crore in 2020-21 from 3.85 crore in 2019-20 (an increase of 28.80 Lakh).
Increase in Reserved Category Students
AISHE 2020-21 states that of the 4.13 crore students enrolled in 2020-21, 14.2% belong to Scheduled Castes, 5.8% belong to Scheduled Tribes, 35.8% are from Other Backward Classes and the remaining 44.2% of students are from other communities.
The growth in enrolment of Scheduled Caste students in 2020-21 as compared to 2019-20 is 4.2%, whereas, the growth in 2019-20 over 2018-19 was 1.6%. Further, the overall increase in SC Student enrolment since 2014-15 is 27.96%.
Enrolment of Scheduled Tribes students has increased to 24.1 lakhs in 2020-21 from 21.6 lakhs in 2019-20. This increase (11.9%) is significantly higher than the increase recorded in the previous year (4.3%). Notably, the overall increase in ST Student enrolment since 2014-15 is 47.00%.
Enrolment of students from Other Backward Classes has increased to about 1.48 crore in 2020-21 from 1.42 crore in 2019-20. Also, the overall increase in OBC Student enrolment since 2014-15 is 31.67%.
Over 75% Students in UG Courses
About 78.09% of the students are enrolled in undergraduate-level courses and the remaining 11.5% are enrolled in postgraduate-level courses. Based on the actual response at the undergraduate level, enrollment is highest in Arts (33.5%), followed by Science (15.5%), Commerce (13.9%) and Engineering & Technology (11.9%).
At the postgraduate level, the maximum number of students are enrolled in the Social Science stream (20.56%) followed by science (14.83%) based on actual responses. At PhD level, enrolment is highest in Engineering &Technology (27.3%) followed by Science (23.4%).
Of the total enrolment in 2020-21, the number of Student enrolment in STEM is 4,06,93,017 (20.19%) based on actual responses. While in the Science stream, females outnumbered males, in Engineering & Technology males outnumbered females.
Out of the total enrolment of 4,13,80,713 students, a vast majority of 3.26 crore students are enrolled in Under Graduate level (78.9%) followed by 11.4% of students enrolled in Post-Graduation level (47.16 lakh). There are 2,255 students enrolled in Integrated PhD in addition to 2.11 lakh students enrolled at PhD. Level. There is a small share of 7.2% of students enrolled at the Diploma level i.e. 29.79 lakh students and out of this majority of students are enrolled in Technical/ Polytechnic, Nursing and Teacher Training streams. A small share of 1.55 lakh and 2.57 lakh students are enrolled at Certificate and PG Diploma levels, respectively, constituting 0.38% and 0.62% of the total share.
The highest enrolment among all the programmes is in Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), with 104 lakh students, of which 52.7% are female and 47.3% are male. Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) has 49.12 lakh students enrolled (out of them 52.2% are female). There are 43.22 lakh students enrolled in B.Com. (out of them 48.5% are female).
B.Tech. has 23.20 lakh enrolled students out of which 28.7% are female. Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) has 13.42 lakh students enrolled out of which 28.5% are females.
Leading States in Enrolment
The top six states in terms of student enrolment are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan. They constitute 53.17% of the total Student Enrolment.
Uttar Pradesh has the highest student enrolment (16.07%) followed by Maharashtra (10.98%) and Tamil Nadu (8.06%). Looking at the density of colleges, Gujarat, Telangana and Kerala, each having at least 29 or more Colleges per lakh population.
In Uttar Pradesh, there are 8114 Colleges and for every one lakh population, there are 32 Colleges. Similarly, Maharashtra comes second with 4532 Colleges and 34 Colleges per lakh population. Karnataka comes at third position with 4233 colleges and 62 Colleges per lakh population whereas Rajasthan is at fourth position with 3694 Colleges and 40 Colleges per lakh population.
Tamil Nadu comes at fifth position with 2667 Colleges and has a College density of 40. Madhya Pradesh comes at sixth position with 2610 Colleges and 29 Colleges per lakh population whereas Andhra Pradesh is at seventh position with 2601 Colleges and 49 Colleges per lakh population. At the eighth position, Gujarat has 2267 Colleges and 31 Colleges for every one lakh population.
College per District
There are wide variations in the number of colleges per district, the top 50 districts have about 32.0% of colleges.
Bengaluru Urban has the highest number of colleges in the country, which is 1058, followed by Jaipur with 671, Hyderabad has third highest with 488, followed by Pune (466) and Prayagraj 374.
| Bengaluru Urban | 1058 |
| Jaipur | 671 |
| Hyderabad | 488 |
| Pune | 466 |
| Prayagraj | 374 |
| Rangareddi | 345 |
| Bhopal | 327 |
| Nagpur | 318 |
| Ghazipur | 316 |
| Sikar | 308 |
Foreign Students: Nepal, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan send maximum
The AISHE Report states that the total number of foreign students enrolled in higher education is 48,035. The foreign students have come from 163 different countries.
In 2020-21, the highest share of foreign students are from Nepal (28.26%), followed by Afghanistan (8.49%), Bangladesh (5.72%), Bhutan (3.8%), Sudan (3.33%) and United States (5.12%).
The top 10 countries from where students come to India include United Arab Emirates (4.8%), Bhutan (3.8%), Sudan (3.3%), Nigeria (2.9%), Tanzania (2.7%), and Yemen (2.3%). Also, the number of male students coming from these top 10 countries was higher than the number of female students.
The highest number of foreign students are enrolled in Undergraduate courses, (75.9%) followed by Post Graduate (16.2%) with enrolment in the rest of the levels constituting 7.9% (Figure 22 a). Foreign male students are higher in almost all the levels
The highest number of students are enrolled in B.Tech. (11245 students) followed by B.Sc. (having 3439 students) BBA (3314 students) B.Com. (2605 students) B.E. (2541 students). MBA (2099 students), B.Pharma (2021 students). BCA (1918 students).
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Abhay an alumnus of IIMC and Delhi University, has over a decade long experience of reporting on various beats of journalism. During his free time he prefers listening to music or play indoor and outdoor games.