Big Drop In Students Entering Engineering, Arts Courses

According to a the latest All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), an official survey which covers all the institutions in the country engaged in imparting the higher education, in a period of five years, the enrolment in Engineering and Arts courses has seen big fall. The enrolment has witnessed a drop of around 5 lakh students in various Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) courses in higher education institutions across India while it is 6.6 lakh in Arts. The B.Tech and B.E enrolment fell from 42,54,919 in 2014-15 academic year to 37,70,949 in 2018-19. The Arts enrolment fell from 98,60,520 to 91,98,205 in the same period. According to AISHE, the share of male student enrolled in Engineering and Technology is 71.1% where female enrolment is 28.9%. The data regarding the drop in engineering admission being released amidst the reports of more than 75 engineering and technical colleges across the country have opted for "progressive closure" in this academic year, which means, these institutions will not take fresh admissions from this year.

For 2018-19 academic year, total enrolment in higher education has been estimated to be 37.4 million (37399388) with 19.2 million male and 18.2 million female. Female constitute 48.6% of the total enrolment, AISHE 2018-19 said. 2017-18 recorded a total enrolment of 36.6 million. B.Tech. has 21.25 lakh enrolled students out of which 72% are male whereas the percentage of female is 28%. Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) has 16.45 lakh students enrolled out of which 71.14% students are from male category. The total number of students enrolled in Arts courses is 93.49 lakh out of which 46.96 % are male and 53.03% are female. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education in India is 26.3%, which is calculated for 18-23 years of age group.

GER for male population is 26.3% and for females, it is 26.4%. For Scheduled Castes, it is 23% and for Scheduled Tribes, it is 17.2% as compared to the national GER of 26.3%. Maximum numbers of Students are enrolled in B.A. programme followed by B.Sc. and B.Com. programmes. 10 Programmes out of approximately 187 cover 80.3% of the total students enrolled in higher education. At Undergraduate level the highest number (35.9%) of students are enrolled in Arts/ Humanities/Social Sciences courses followed by Science (16.5%), Engineering and Technology (13.5%) and Commerce (14.1%).