Experts attribute the trend to increasing awareness about education across the country
Over the last five years, enrollments to PhD courses at the various institutes and universities in Maharashtra have seen an increase of 70 percent, according to the recent findings of the sixth All India Survey on Higher Education for the year 2015-16.
In 2015-16, a total of 9,229 students across the state chose a PhD programme as opposed to 5,385 students in 2010-11. The number of female students enrolled for the PhD programme in went up from 1,595 to 3472 during that period. Similarly, students enrolling for M Phil rose from 1,734 in 2010-11 to 2,900 in 2015-16, found an AISHE study.
The survey took place between December 2015 and June 2016 across the country.
At the postgraduate level, the number of students enrolled under various post graduate courses in state run and private institutions across the state was 3,24,861 in 2015-16 - an increase of about 500 students as compared to that of 2010-11.A total of 1,28,728 students from Maharashtra passed their undergraduate degrees in 2015-16 while 1605 students being awarded their PhD degrees.
GG Wankhede, former professor and chairperson of Center for Higher Education at Tata Institute of Social Sciences said that the increasing trend in the number of enrollments does not come as a surprise.
Wankhede said, "Today, we can expect the number of enrollments in higher education going up with the increasing awareness about education despite the socio-economic and rural-urban divide in the country. While the numbers in some sense show a positive picture one needs to ask if as a state, as are getting more number of MPhil and PhD enrollments have we addressed the issue of quality education, what are the factors causing these students to take up research degrees etc."
The number of students from the Scheduled Castes enrolling into the various post-graduate courses also went up from 3,98,803 in 2010-11 to 4,88,288 in 2015-16.
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