Enhancing enrolment in higher education key focus

NEP 2020 sets the target of 50% GER by 2035. Presently, the higher education system is at “mass” level, which will upgrade to “universal” level when GER exceeds 50%. As per the projection of the Technical Group on Population Projection (GOI) the population of 1823 age group in 2035 is expected to be 138.99 million. To register GER of 50%, the enrolment in tertiary sector is required to be 69.49 million. To achieve this target, GER is required to grow at the compounded annual rate of 3.53% per annum. The target appears quite achievable in view of the fact that the compounded growth rate of GER between 2011-12 and 201920 has been 3.58%. Enrolment in higher education cannot grow independent of that in its preceding stage.

Transition rate from secondary to higher secondary has also been far from satisfactory. The focus, along with ensuring substantial enrolment in school, should be on improving inter-stage transition ratio from secondary to higher secondary, and finally to graduation level.

Access to HEI is the next relevant issue. Availability of HEI in Bharat eludes geographical equity. College density (College/lakh population of the target group) is 30 (AISHE-2019-20). While expanding HEIs geographically, the enrolment capacity therein also needs to be augmented. This will necessitate policy change. Bharat has been following the norms of limited enrolment in HEIs. The Radhakrishnan Commission (1949) sought to limit the number of students in universities to 3,000, and colleges to 1,500. The Kothari Commission (1964-66) endorsed thisnotion. The idea of small, high quality HEIs, in Bharat has been in sharp contrast to the policy of large enrolment in the HEIs of China, the US and European countries. In 2016, 35.7 million students were enrolled in Bharat's 51649 HEIs, whereas 41.8 million students were enrolled in China's 2596 institutions only. New HEIs with large student capacity, and enhanced enrolment capacity in existing ones, will address the concern of access to a great extent. The gap that still persists can be plugged by augmenting enrolment in distance and open learning programmes.

However, the share of distance and open learning in total enrolment is almost stagnant at around 11% for the last many years.

In order to attract larger number of eligible youth to higher education, graduate courses need to improve their employability potential. As per India Skills Report 2021 (CII), only 42.72% Arts graduates, 40.30% Commerce graduates and 30.34% Science graduates of Bharat are employable. The difficulty in filling up jobs in Bharat, therefore, is 58%, which is much higher than global standard of 38% in 2015.

A vital issue that needs to be effectively addressed is the affordability of students from weaker financial section. Scholarships, which were a paltry 0.2% of the total enrolment in 2016-17, cannot address this issue. What is required is direct, easily accessible funding of lowincome households through institutional credit system.