According to the Ministry of Education’s All India Survey for Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21 survey report, over 78.9 per cent of 4.1 crore students in higher education are enrolled at the undergraduate level. Among these, the highest enrolment among all the programmes is in Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), with 104 lakhs students, in which 52.7% are female and 47.3% are male.

Although the overall trend suggests that the enrolment is on a record high, yet there has been a dip for Muslims and other minorities which was also on an upward trend for the past five years.

The date further revealed that “Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) has 49.12 lakh students enrolled (out of them 52.2% are female), 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 and Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) has 13.42 lakh students enrolled out of which 28.5% are females.”

From 17.39 lakh enrolment in 2016-17, the number of Muslim students rose to 21 lakh in 2019-20, before it dipped to 19.21 lakh in the latest study. Similarly, from 7.9 lakh in 2016-17 to 8.8 lakh in 2019-20, number of other minority students in the latest survey stands at 8.2 lakh.

The Ministry of Education has been conducting All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) since 2011, covering all higher educational institutions in India.

The detailed report comprises information on different parameters such as student enrolment, teachers’ data, infrastructural information, financial information, etc.

For the first time, in AISHE 2020-21, the higher education institutions, or HEIs, have filled the data online through the Web Data Capture Format (DCF) developed by the Department of Higher Education with the help of the National Informatics Centre (NIC).

Source: AISHE survey report, TOI

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