The country's Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education has also registered an increase from 24.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 25.2 per cent in 2016-17
The total number of students enrolling for higher education in the country has increased from 2.75 crore in the year 2010-11 to 3.57 crore students in the year 2016-17, the All India Survey for Higher Education (AISHE) for 2016-17 said on Friday.
The number of students have gone up by 35 lakh in the past three years, the report added.
The country's Gross Enrolment Ratio or GER in higher education has also registered an increase from 24.5 per cent in 2015-16 to 25.2 per cent in 2016-17. GER is a statistical measure for determining the number of students enrolled in undergraduate, postgraduate and research-level studies within the country and is expressed as a percentage of the population. The age group that is considered while calculating GER is between 18 to 23 years.
While India aims to attain a GER of 30 per cent by the year 2020, it is still way behind countries like China with a GER of 43.39 per cent and USA with a GER of 85.8 percent.
There were a total of 864 universities in the country last year compared to 799 in 2015-16; there were 621 universities in India in the year 2010-11. The number of colleges in the corresponding years was 32,974 in 2010-11 and 40,026 colleges in 2016-17.
In terms of college density, Puducherry, Telangana and Karnataka have the most number of colleges per lakh population and are ranked at the top three positions. Puducherry has, on an average, 549 students enrolled in each college. This is followed by Telangana with 483 students in each college and Karnataka with 381. The college density in the top three states is 49 in Puducherry, 59 in Telangana and 53 in Karnataka. Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal have the worst college density. Bihar has only seven colleges per one lakh population, which burdens each college with 1,801 students.
The state performed poorly in terms of GER as well, with only 14.9 per cent of its population between 18 to 23 years pursuing higher education. Tamil Nadu has the highest GER in the country at 46.9 per cent, which is higher than the national average.
In terms of attracting foreign students, there is a marginal improvement from 45,424 in 2015-16 to 47,575 in 2016-17. Of the total foreign students, 31,779 are men and 15,796 are women.
The Gender Parity Index (GPI), a ratio of proportional representation of female and male, has also improved from 0.86 to 0.94 from 2010-11 to 2016017, which means that currently there are 94 women against 100 men in the higher education system. To give a further boost to girl students, the ministry has already announced a supernumerary quota in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) for girls.
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