The first All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) was initiated in the year 2011 for the year 2010-11. The survey was necessitated because while enormous changes had taken place in higher education since independence, no source gave the complete picture of higher education in the country. The survey intended to cover all the institutions in the country imparting higher education. It was also the first time that all major stakeholders in higher education, such as the University Grants Commission, All India Council of Technical Education, and Medical Council of India, as well as the state and central governments, participated in the data collection.
Since then, given its immense utility for providing comprehensive data, the survey has become an annual exercise. It is an online survey, is voluntary and is almost entirely based on information supplied by institutions themselves. It collects data on several parameters, such as student enrolment, teachers, courses, examination results, infrastructure, etc., and calculates various indicators of educational development, such as institutional density, gross enrolment ratio, pupil-teacher ratio, gender parity index, and so on. In this regard, the latest available survey is for the year 2021-22, with data collected up to December 31, 2021.
In the next two articles, I propose to sum up the present picture of higher institutions in the country as reflected in this survey. This article sums up data about the institutional network, while the next one will summarise the composition of students enrolled, courses they choose, teaching and non-teaching staff patterns and the number and origin of foreign students in our colleges and universities.
A total of 1,168 universities were registered, out of which 1,162 responded to the survey. Out of these, 423 are state public universities and 391 are state private universities. There are 53 central universities and 153 institutions of national importance. There are 81 private deemed universities, 33 government deemed universities and 10 government-aided deemed universities. Around 328 universities have affiliated colleges, and 17 universities are exclusively for women. Around 56.4% of universities are general in nature, 16.5% are technical, 7% are medical and 4.5% are agricultural universities. Rest specialise in science, law, management, Sanskrit and other subjects.
The three Union Territories—Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep—have no university. There are 18 open universities: one central, 16 state (public) and one state (private). They offer education in distance mode.
About 45,473 colleges affiliated to 328 universities registered with the portal, and 42,825 colleges responded. Around 147 affiliating universities have more than 100 colleges, and out of these, 20 universities have more than 500 colleges. There are wide variations in the number of colleges per district. For instance, 10.7% of colleges out of the total are registered in only 10 districts, ranging from 1106 colleges in Bangalore urban to 703 in Jaipur, 491 in Hyderabad and 475 in Pune. At an all-India level, 137 districts have colleges in the range of 100-299 colleges, and 10 districts have colleges in the range of 300-999 colleges.
While college density (the number of colleges per lakh eligible population in the age group of 18-23 years) at an all-India level is 30, it is much higher in Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Puducherry and Kerala. Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, and Gujarat are top states in terms of the number of colleges.
Out of 42,825 colleges, 60% are general in nature, 8.7% specialise in education/teacher education, 6.1% in engineering and technology and 4.3% in nursing. About 14,297 colleges offer PG courses, and 1,063 colleges enrol students for PhDs. Out of 42,825 colleges, 21.5 % are government colleges, 13.2 % are private-aided colleges and a large number, 65.3 %, are private and unaided colleges. A majority of colleges are small: 35.2% of colleges have less than 200 students (17.3% of colleges have less than 100 students each!), and 46.1% of colleges have between 200 and 1000 students. Only 18.7% of colleges have more than 1000 students. And 10.4% of colleges are exclusively for women.
Standalone institutions are specialised institutions primarily offering diploma courses. These include polytechnics, teacher training institutes, nursing institutes, management institutes, institutes directly under central ministries, paramedical institutes and hotel and catering institutes. Around 12002 standalone institutions registered, and out of these, 10,576 uploaded data.
There are more than 3000 such institutes, each offering technical courses, teacher training and nursing courses. The number of standalone institutions varies widely across states, and 58% of these are located in rural areas. Further, 67.6% of technical/polytechnic institutions, 61.9% of teacher training institutions and 46.8% of nursing institutions are located in rural areas. Around 23.7% of these are government-owned and managed, while 9.9% are private (aided) and 66.4% are private (unaided).
Let me sum up this set of data. We have a highly diversified network of institutions of higher education in the country. A large number of colleges are small, offer only undergraduate courses and are privately owned and self-financed. Similarly, a majority of stand-alone institutions offering diploma courses are in rural areas and are privately owned and self-financed. This reality is very different from the colleges that many of us in Mumbai or Delhi are familiar with: hundreds of students, offering multiple courses and still significantly funded by the state.
Vrijendra taught at a Mumbai college for more than 30 years and has been associated with democratic rights groups in the city.
