Regional disparities in edu infra: Survey

NEWDELHI: The higher education infrastructure in the country is heavily skewed in favour of less than 10% districts, which have over 30% of all colleges in the country.

These are the highlights of an All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) 2018-19 released by the HRD ministry recently. According to the survey, just 10 districts in India have nearly 10% of the country’s colleges. Significantly, most of these districts are either in south or western part of the country. And then there are 153 districts which do not have even 10 colleges each.

Karnataka has a rich spread of educational institutions with 53 colleges catering to every lakh people of its eligible population.

Bihar languishes at the bottom of the higher education table with only seven colleges for every lakh of eligible population. Hyderabad has 463 colleges, Pune 450, Prayagraj 343, Rangareddy 332 and Nagpur 313. The country’s financial capital Mumbai has 305 colleges followed by Guntur’s 298 and Bhopal’s 280 colleges.

Not a single district from the country’s east or northeast has made it to the list of top 10 districts.

According to the report, the top eight states in terms of highest number of colleges in India are Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Of the around 700 districts in India, 153 districts do not even have 10 colleges each. Another 102 have less then 20 colleges. Yet another 174 districts have more than 20 but less than 50 colleges. Another 136 districts are comparatively better but still have less than 100 colleges.

Among other states, Jharkhand has 12 districts with less than 10 colleges each. Bihar has nine districts with less than 10 college. Madhya Pradesh has 18 districts with less than 20 colleges.

Odisha has 11 districts with less than 20 colleges while it has only one with over a hundred colleges. States such as Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Tripura do not have a single district with over 100 colleges.