DELHI – According to the report released by the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 47,914 teachers were hired across higher educational institutes in India in 2020-21.

The AISHE report states that in 2020-21, a total of 2.12 crore male and 2.01 crore female students enrolled in higher education, which is higher than 2019-20, when 1.96 crore male and 1.89 female students were enrolled in higher education.

“As per response, 4.6% students belong to Muslim Minority and 2.0% are from other Minority Communities. Notable feature is that Muslim Minority and other Minority communities have more female students than male students,” the report said.

AISHE conducts the survey annually and collects data on areas like teachers hired, student enrolment, programmes, and examination results. This time, the entire exercise was conducted through electronic mode and a government-formatted web portal – aishe.gov.in.

Here are key takeaways from the report:

Student Enrolment in Higher Education

Total enrolment in higher education increased to nearly 4.13 crore in 2020-21 from 3.85 crores in 2019-20, an increase of 28.80 lakhs. Of the total enrolments, 48.67 per Cent were female and 51.33 per cent was male. The report reads, “The annual rate of increase in enrolment has also shown an improvement over the years. The increase in enrolment in 2020-21 over 2019-20 is 7.4 per cent which in 2019-20 was 3 per cent.”

Among the total number of students enrolled in higher education during 2020-21, 14.2 per cent come from scheduled castes (SC) community, followed by 5.8 per cent from scheduled tribes (ST), and 35.8 per cent are from Other Backward Classes (OBC). The largest chunk of 44.2 per cent students are from other communities.

“Uttar Pradesh has the highest student enrolment (16.07%) followed by Maharashtra (10.98%) and Tamil Nadu (8.06%),” the report said. The other states that have higher student enrolment are Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Rajasthan. They constitute 53.17 per cent of the total student enrolment. Of 53.17 per cent – between 43 and 49.5 per cent are female students.

It showed that 54 per cent of Muslims enrolled for higher education in the state are women. More women in India enrol for courses like M.Phil. and post-graduation, “with student enrolment at M.Phil. being 62.10% female and in Post Graduate 56.45% female.”

Number of higher education institutions increased

The report found that the number of Universities increased by 70 during 2020-21, to 1,113 in 2020-21 from 1,043 in 2019-20. The number of colleges increased by 1,453 during 2020-21, to 43,796 in 2020-21 from 42,343 in 2019-20.

The report said, “Among 1099 responding universities, 475 Universities are located in rural areas. 17 Universities are exclusively for women with 2 each in Haryana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal and 1 each in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttarakhand.”

According to the report, the top 10 states that have the highest number of colleges are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana and Kerala, each having at least 29 or more colleges per lakh population.

In Uttar Pradesh, there are 8,114 colleges and for every one lakh population, there are 32 Colleges. Similarly, Maharashtra comes second with 4,532 colleges and 34 colleges per lakh population followed by Karnataka with 4,233, and Rajasthan with 3,694 colleges.

Tamil Nadu comes at fifth position and Madhya Pradesh at sixth with 2,667 colleges and 2,610 colleges respectively.

Most foreign students come from Nepal

A total of of 48,035 foreign students enrolled in India for higher education in 2020-21 and come from 163 different countries. Of 48,035 foreign students, the highest number of students are from neighbouring countries, of which Nepal contributes 28.25 per cent, followed by Afghanistan 8.4 per cent, Bangladesh 5.7 per cent, and the United States 5.1 per cent.

The other countries in the top 10 that see students enrolling in India include United Arab Emirates (4.8 per cent), Bhutan (3.8 per cent) Sudan (3.3 per cent), Nigeria (2.9 per cent), Tanzania (2.7 per cent) and Yemen (2.3 per cent).

The reports mention that of the foreign students, male numbers are higher than the female. Karnataka holds the highest number of foreign students with 8,137, followed by Punjab with 6,557.

Teaching Position

According to the data, there were 47,914 more teachers working in higher education institutions in 2020-21 than there were in 2019-20. The total number of teachers for the year 2020-21 was 15,51,070, as compared to 15,03,156 in 2019- 20. Out of them, 57.1 per cent were male and 42.9 per cent were female. However, in states like Kerala, Punjab, Chandigarh, Goa, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Delhi, Haryana and Lakshadweep female teachers are more than male teachers.

At an all-India level, 56.2 per cent of teachers belong to the general category, while SC and ST teachers are 9.1 and 2.5 per cent respectively. Muslim teachers are about 5.6 per cent appointed in all educational institutes.