Topics Covered:
- Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.
AISHE report
What to study?
For Prelims: Key findings of the report.
For Mains: Concerns, challenges ahead and measures to address them.
Context: All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) report for 2018-19 was recently released by the HRD ministry.
Background:
- The survey, undertaken as an annual, web-based, pan-India exercise on the status of Higher Education since 2010-11, covers all the Higher Educational Institutions in the country
- The survey collects data on several parameters like teachers, student enrolment, programmes, examination results, education finance, infrastructure, etc.
Key findings:
- Gender gap narrowing.
- More Girls in two states: In Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka, there are now more females in the age group of 18-23 enrolling for higher education than male students.
- Female enrolment improved from 47.6% in 2017-18 to 48.6% in 2018-19.
- The gross enrolment ratio (GER) increased marginally – from 25.8 in 2017-18 to 26.3 in 2018-19.
- In absolute terms, enrolment increased from 3.66 crore to 3.74 crore students in the same period. GER for SCs has also shown a growth from 21.8 to 23.0 and STs from 15.9 to 17.2.
Number of universities has grown from 903 in 2017-18 to 993 in 2018-19 and total HEIs (higher educational institutions) from 49,964 to 51,649 in the same period. - Number of faculty has also increased from 13.88 lakh to 14.16 lakh.
- Preferred stream at PG level: While one-third of undergraduate students are enrolled in humanities, management seems to be a preferred stream at the postgraduate (PG) level. Science and engineering technology registered relatively more enrolment in M. Phil and Ph.D programmes.
- Preferred stream at the UG level, 35.9% of the total enrolment was in arts/ humanities/social science, just 16.5% students are pursuing science, followed by commerce with 14.1%. Engineering is the fourth choice.
Sources: the Hindu.
