All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) 2021–22 was made public on January 25, 2024.

• Initiated in – 2011.
• Aim – To give complete picture of Higher Education in the country.
• 3 Categories – Universities, Colleges and Stand-alone institutions.
• Data source – Voluntary uploading of data by institutions of Higher Education listed in www.aishe.gov.in portal.
• AISHE 2021-22 – It was the 11^th Survey and 1^st Survey conducted through Web Data Capture Format (DCF).

For the 1^st time, all the major Stakeholders in Higher Education, such as UGC, AICTE, MCI as well as State Governments participated in the data collection exercise for AISHE 2021-22.

Key takeaways from AISHE 2021-22 Report

• Increase in enrolment – 4.33 crore students, up from 2020-21 level, captured in 8 different levels.

• Primacy of government institutions – 73.7% of all students attend government universities, where state public universities have the largest share of enrolment, accounting for around 31%.
• Higher enrolment of females – It has steadily increased to 2.07 crores in 2021-22, a 32% jump from 2014-15 levels with the highest numbers at the post graduate level, 55.4% are women.
• Gender Enrolment Ratio – It is 28.4 for the age group 18-23 years at all India level (population data from the 2011 census) and is in favour of women in 26 states and Union Territories.
  • Chandigarh boasts of the highest GER (64.8%), followed by Puducherry, Delhi and Tamil Nadu.

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) indicates how many students are part of the higher education system in a given population.

• Gender Parity Index – It is 1.01 at all-India level, and for SC and ST categories, it is 1.01 and 0.98 respectively.

Gender Parity Index (GPI) shows the ratio of the female GER to male GER. A GPI of 1 indicates parity between the two genders, GPI greater than 1 indicates a disparity in favour of females.

• Higher preferences for Arts – In UG, Bachelor of Arts (BA) and in PG, Master of Arts (MA) programme has the highest enrolment.
• Demographics of students graduating – Among the graduated students, roughly 50.8% are women and the graduation rate in arts and social sciences streams is higher than others.
• Category-wise, around 35% of the students belong to OBC, 13% are from SC and 5.7% are from ST community.