Bridging the gender and community gaps in India's higher education system

A study of higher education trends in India points towards many desirable and prospective policy recommendations to fill arising discrepancies

As the Indian economy becomes more and more knowledge-based, human capital becomes more and more critical. Is the country churning out enough graduates and in the required domains? Are enough students pursuing higher studies? How are girls faring? Are certain states in India racing ahead while others lag behind? What about specific communities?

In 2010-11, the government embarked on a new and important mission. It began painstakingly collecting data on the number of graduates, post graduates, the higher education institutions across states, the various fields that students are opting for, the number of institutes that have come up and so on. The All-India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE) provides a very comprehensive set of statistics on what is happening with regard to the country’s human resource development post K12. This has now been published for seven years.

But herein lies the rub. The data is collected and gathers dust. Gaps are identified but remain gaps. Policy-making remains divorced from the reality on the ground. The NITI Aayog and various government institutions that design policy fly their own kites, paying very little heed to what the data suggests and what the country needs.

This is where former Infosys director and chairman of Manipal Group T V Mohandas Pai and Nisha Holla have stepped in to bridge the gap. Using the data gathered through the annual surveys, they have arrived at certain findings. The findings reveal the areas where policy action needs to be directed. If India wants to reach $5 trillion by 2025 and it is a knowledge-led economy, the development of human capital becomes a critical input.

The report has been presented to the NITI Aayog and the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council. Excerpts from a chat with Anjuli Bhargava:

Q: What are some of the most important findings of the data analysis in your view ?

Pai: One of the most interesting findings is that more and more Indian students, especially women, are enrolling for graduate and post graduate study with overall gross enrollment ratio growing at 3.6 per cent a year.

Perhaps what makes analysis of the data critical now is the fact that India’s population inversion is coming and the pyramid has inverted for the first time. Soon, we will have a large ageing population supported by a shrinking workforce. Therefore, it is imperative that the productivity of this workforce is high so that it can support the ageing population.

We have 37.4 million students in college today with a gross enrollment ratio of 26.3 per cent, up from 20.8 per cent in 2011-12. This is projected to reach 38 per cent by 2030. Enrolment is very diverse across states. Tamil Nadu is at the highest at 49 per cent, the South as a while is at 30 per cent and the East is very low with Orissa at 22 per cent and Bengal at 19 per cent. Bihar is very low with the GER having barely risen by 1-2 per cent over 7-8 years. In the West, Gujarat is quite low.

What’s heartening is that girls are catching up with the boys at breakneck speed and in 2018-19, the gross enrolment in higher education for girls at 26.4 million crossed the number of boys for the first time ever. 

The decade of 2020-30 will be the decade of the Indian woman. The total number of women in colleges will go up in this decade, more women graduates will be coming into the job market and fertility levels will fall with higher education. Higher literacy is having an impact on population growth. Fertility rates for the country as a whole have fallen. 

Q: But where do these women disappear? Women’s participation rates in the labour force are actually falling in India. 

A: Yes. So, the key question that arises is, are these educated women graduates participating as much in the work force, and here the answer is no. There is a reason for this. More girls are in school and college than ever before. 

The largest number of women graduates are coming out from the North – UP, MP and Rajasthan – but the largest numbers of jobs are being created in the South. In the South, more jobs are being created than the number of graduates. The men from the North who go to college, or even casual labour, are emigrating to the South in a big way. No matter which South Indian city you look at, you will find Biharis and Oriyas. In Kerala, 9 per cent of the population that speaks Hindi is from Bihar. 

But the women are not migrating. Women are enrolling in master’s programmes probably to delay marriages. There is a clear and discernible gap in jobs in states like UP, MP, Gujarat and Rajasthan for women graduates and jobs available. 

Look at UP alone. Last year, the country produced 9.1 million graduates. UP alone produced 1.6 million and over half of those are women. If the government could find or create employment opportunities for these educated women near where they live, you’d see a spike in labour force participation rates. If we can fix that, we are unlocking another level of our human capital.

Q: How has the progress been in social groups ?

The transformation in social groups has been remarkable but specific measures are needed for the Muslim youth.  SC/ST account for 16.6 per cent of the population and 13.3 per cent are in college. Tribals are 8.7 per cent of population and 5.8 per cent are in college. The backward classes are 40 per cent of the population and 36 per cent are in college.  

The so-called forwards are 15 per cent and these makes up 35% of the graduates. Their GER is around 65%, which is very high. Yet the number of forwards coming into college – 18 to 23 years – is falling because their fertility rates of this group as a whole have come down long ago due to higher education. 

Muslims comprise 15 per cent of the population but only 5.2 per cent of the youth are in college. Now why is this so? Muslim GER has grown 7.7 per cent for men and 7.8 per cent for girls from 2011-12 to 2018-19. That means more and more Muslim youth are coming into college. But the numbers are low compared to the size of the Muslim population.

The reason for this is very clear. SC/STs, OBCs, BCs and other minorities have reservation but in many institutions, the Muslim students (barring some places where they are included in OBCs and don’t have to pay fees) have to pay the fees. Government institutions included aided is only around 35 per cent of the total institutions. A majority of the private institutions the Muslim community cannot afford to pay the fees.  At a policy level, this tells us we must double or even triple our scholarships for Muslim youngsters to ensure they cover the gaps to some extent and don’t while away their time in menial or unproductive activities. Educated Muslim girls are critical to control the fertility rates. From 2003-05 to 2013-15, with increasing levels of education, the fertility of Muslim women has fallen. 

In J&K, the Muslims are 68 per cent of the population. GER for the state is 30 per cent but the Muslims GER is only 18 per cent. So you can see how low it is. 32 per cent of the population accounts for 60 per cent of the total enrollment. Despite the fact that the state has a Muslim majority, it has not helped the Muslims progress. The focus has to be to create more colleges in the state. A whole section of society in India is being left behind in a massive way. We can’t afford this with any section.

Q : Is there a widening divide between different states regions in development of human capital ? Does your analysis capture this?

A : Eastern India is lagging severely behind. We are all aware of how many students have to migrate for college all over the country from the East. Many more higher education institutions are needed there and the data just confirms this already known fact. If the 15th Finance Commission had examined this data carefully, it should have allocated a special fund for this.

Bihar is the sick man of India at 13% GER followed by West Bengal at 19%. Orissa has gone by from 16 per cent to 22 per cent in 7 years so the work being done by Naveen Patnaik is effective. UP is 26 per cent and has done quite well. Bihar and West Bengal need a sharp thrust.

In general South West India is doing well Gujarat is the only state with a lower gross enrollment ratio (20.4) than the national average (26.3). Tamil Nadu leads the pack with a GER of 49.

Q : What does the data show about various fields? Where are we lagging behind ?

A : India needs to invest in domain competency. The data shows that the number of students enrolled in bachelor of arts is the largest but it is now stagnating. The number of BSc, MBBS and bachelor of commerce are growing well. The number of B-Eds is high and growing and may even lead to an overcapacity – we may soon have more teachers than we need! Contrary to what many believe, less students are enrolling to become engineers - B-tech and BE enrollments have fallen. India is churning out teachers and doctors at a scorching pace even as engineering and commerce graduates are getting less common. Another worry is that compared with other domains, less students in India are pursuing a PhD or a post graduate degree in computers and IT, an area where India has been doing well.