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Journalism of Courage
In the academic year 2020-21, 55,48,809 students enrolled in science courses at undergraduate, post-graduate, MPhil and PhD and females (53.1 per cent) outnumbered males, All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) report reveals.
As per the report, in 2020-21, 48,17,826 students enrolled in science undergraduate courses and 52 per cent were female. A total of 6,79,178 students enrolled in science post-graduate programmes, of which 61.3 per cent were females. In PG, the highest enrolment was in Chemistry with 1,53,635 students, of which 52.3 per cent were females followed by mathematics with a total enrolment of 1,04,269 with 60 per cent females.
In PhD, enrolment in science was 48,600 students with 48.8 per cent females. Within science, the highest enrolment was in chemistry with 9,863 students, of which 44.9 per cent are females, followed by Physics, with a total enrolment 7,720.
However, this is a marginal increase as compared to the previous year. As per AISHE 2019-20 report, in that year 47.55 lakh students had opted for science courses out of which 51.7 per cent were female. This number has only improved by 0.3 per cent in the current report.
The enrolment of girls in engineering programmes is substantially low when compared to their male counterparts. Overall in UG, PG, MPhil and PhD engineering programmes, the total enrolment is 36,86,291 where 71 per cent of enrolled students were males and 29 per cent were females.
Engineering has seen an overall downward trend in enrolment in the latest report. The enrolment in BTech and BE programmes in the regular (or full-time) mode has dropped by 10 per cent from 40.85 lakh in 2016-17 to 36.63 lakh in 2020-21.
