Telling Numbers: In higher education, dropout rates decline in last five years

These emerge out of data tabled by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in response to two separate questions during the ongoing session of Parliament.

Dropout rates have been declining in higher education institutions over the years. Gross enrolment in higher education, meanwhile, is at just over a quarter of the population in the relevant age group. These emerge out of data tabled by the Ministry of Human Resource Development in response to two separate questions during the ongoing session of Parliament.

On Monday, the ministry presented data to show that there has been a decreasing trend in dropout rate over the last five years. The dropout rate in the IITs has fallen from 2.25% in 2015-16 to less than 1% in 2019-20, that in the IIMs has fallen from 1.04% to less than 1% in the same period, and that in other institutions of higher education from 7.49% to 2.82%.

This trend has been achieved by taking a number of corrective measures to minimise the dropout, which include appointment of advisors to monitor the academic progress of students and peer-assisted learning, the ministry said.

Source: Ministry of HRD

Last week, the ministry tabled data from the Unified District Information System for Education Plus (UDISE+) 2018-19 (provisional), and the All India Survey on Higher Education 2018-19 (AISHE), which showed that the Gross enrolment ratio (GER) at Secondary, Senior Secondary and Higher Education are similar for boys and girls.

Source: Ministry of HRD

Gross enrolment ratio is calculated by dividing the number of students enrolled in a given level of education regardless of age, by the population of the age group which officially corresponds to the given level of education, and multiplying the result by 100.

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At the higher education level, according to AISHE 2018-19, the GER is 26.29% for boys and 26.36% for girls. At school and senior secondary levels, too, GER is again a little higher for girls than for boys.