AISHE report: Institutional network of higher education

Though higher education in India has expanded significantly in recent years, its distribution and density continue to remain lop-sided.

Higher education plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between formal education and labour market in a society. It also plays an important role in the intellectual growth of an individual. Yet, before the AISHE reports, there was no systematic collection of data covering the entire range of higher education institutions in the country.

As the need for regular flow of comprehensive, timely, and quality data on higher education for policy formulation was increasingly felt, the government of India initiated AISHE in 2013, with comprehensive data collected for the year 2010-11. Since then, the annual report of AISHE has become the single source of comprehensive statistics on higher education in the country. 

The latest report of AISHE pertains to the academic year 2023-24. It was released in July 2026. In the report for teachers’ data, the reference date was December 31, 2023. For examination results, data for students in the academic year 2022-23 were considered. Financial information was collected for the financial year ending on March 31, 2023. 

It needs to be noted that the participation of HEIs in the survey is voluntary, and data are submitted by the HEIs themselves. Thus, the responsibility for the accuracy of the data submitted lies with HEIs themselves, even though the DoHE does data verification to the extent possible. 

Based on data available in this survey, I propose to sum up the present status of higher education institutions in the country in two parts. This article sums up data about the institutional network, while the next one will summarise the composition of students enrolled, courses they choose, teaching and non-teaching staff patterns, and the number of foreign students our colleges and universities attract and from where. 

A total of 1,289 universities, 48,246 colleges and 15,221 stand-alone institutions were registered in AISHE 2023-24. Of them, 1,278 universities, 46,468 colleges, and 11,787 stand-alone institutions uploaded their data on the AISHE portal. Out of the 1,289 universities, 346 are affiliating (central and state public) universities, with 48,246 affiliated/constituent colleges. 151 universities have 100 or more affiliated colleges, out of which 21 universities have 500 or more affiliated colleges.

Out of 1,289 registered universities, 733 are government managed (254 central and 479 state). There are 55 central universities and 159 institutes of national importance. There are 464 state private universities. There are 115 deemed universities—33 are public universities and 82 are private. Out of 1278 responding universities, 1,069 have hostel facilities for students, and 122 offer distance education. There are 18 open universities—one central and 17 state—offering distance education.

Gujarat (107), Uttar Pradesh (103), Rajasthan (93), Karnataka (91), and Madhya Pradesh (89) are the top 5 states with large numbers of universities. Three union territories—Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, and Daman and Diu and Lakshadweep—have no university, only colleges.

Almost 60% of universities are now general/multidisciplinary, 13.5% are technical, 7.7% are medical, and 4.1% are agricultural universities. Remaining universities are in other disciplines. 37 universities are minority-managed institutions: 16 are managed by Muslims, 10 by Christians, 5 by Jains and 3 by the Sikh minority. There are 18 universities and 4,787 colleges exclusively for women. 

There are wide variations in the number of colleges per district. 10.4% of colleges out of the total number of colleges are registered in only 10 districts. About 30% of colleges are in the top 50 districts. Bangalore urban has a maximum of 1,148 colleges, followed by Jaipur (742), Pune (517), and Hyderabad (465). 154 districts have less than 10 colleges each. 

The average college density (the number of colleges per lakh eligible population aged 18-23 years) at the all-India level is 32. Karnataka (69), Telangana (56), Andhra Pradesh (51), Himachal Pradesh (51), and Kerala (50) have a high number of colleges per lakh population, while Bihar (8), Jharkhand (9), and West Bengal (16) lag far behind. Uttar Pradesh (8,625), Maharashtra (5,380), Karnataka (4,529), Rajasthan (4,324), and Tamil Nadu (2,983) are the top 5 states in terms of number of colleges. 15,901 out of 46,468 colleges offer post-graduate programmes.

Out of 46,468 colleges, 7,944 (17.1%) are government colleges, 6,011 (12.9%) are private (aided), and 32,513 (70%) are private (unaided) colleges. The majority of colleges are small in terms of the number of students enrolled. 37.9% of colleges have fewer than 200 students, while about 45% of colleges have student strength between 200 and 1,000. Only 17.2% of colleges have more than 1,000 students, while only 4% of colleges have enrolments of more than 3,000 students. 

Stand-alone institutions are specialised institutions offering diploma courses. These include polytechnics, teacher training institutes, nursing institutes, management institutes, institutes directly under central ministries, para-medical institutes, and hotel and catering institutes.

There are 15,221 such registered institutes, out of which 11,787 uploaded data on the portal. The majority of them offer technical (4,209), teacher training (2,688), and nursing (3,744) courses. 235 institutes offer postgraduate diplomas in management. 22% of these institutions are government owned and managed, while 8% are private (aided) and 70% are private (unaided). The number of stand-alone institutions varies widely across states.

Let me sum up this set of data. The network of institutions of higher education in the country is now dominated by undergraduate and small colleges. The majority of these colleges are privately owned and managed without any financial assistance from the state. Though higher education has expanded significantly in the recent years, its distribution and density continue to remain lop-sided. 

(Part1 of a 2-part series)

VRIJENDRA