What does the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21 report state about reserved category student enrollment in Higher Education Institutes (HEIs)? It reveals a significant increase in enrollment of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) students from 2014-15 to 2020-21. The report, released by the Ministry of Education, shows 4.13 crore students enrolled in 2020-21, with 14.2% being SC, 5.8% ST, and 35.8% OBC. The rest, 44.2%, were from other communities, per PTI.
The AISHE report shows SC student enrollment growth of 4.2% in 2020-21 compared to 1.6% in 2019-20. The overall increase in SC enrollment since 2014-15 is 27.96%. ST student enrollment increased from 21.6 lakh in 2019-20 to 24.1 lakh in 2020-21, a higher increase of 11.9% compared to the previous year's 4.3%. The overall increase in ST enrollment since 2014-15 is 47.00%. The report also states that OBC student enrollment increased from 1.42 crore in 2019-20 to 1.48 crore in 2020-21, with an overall increase of 31.67% since 2014-15.
The report mentions a 20.9% overall increase in enrollment since 2014-15. It also states that 2.12 crore (51.3%) male students and 2.01 crore (48.7%) female students were enrolled in higher education in 2020-21. In 2019-20, enrollment was 1.96 crore for males and 1.89 crore for females.
The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education has also grown to 27.3 per cent. GER is the ratio of 18-23-year-old adults attending college to the total population, which was calculated according to the 2011 census for the survey. Talking about institute-wise enrolment, the report said that the majority of the enrolment is in government institutions, despite a large share of private institutions in the country, as per PTI.
The report states that government universities, which make up 59.1% of all universities, contribute 73.1% to total student enrollment. Meanwhile, private universities, which account for 40% of all HEIs, contribute only 26.3% to total enrollment.
