HYDERABAD: Telangana proves to be one of the most encouraging states in India for students from Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Muslim community to pursue higher education, reveals All India Survey on Higher Education 2015-16.
The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) of SC students aged between 18-23 years in TS as per AISHE 2015-16 report was 36.1 per cent, which is the highest in country and GER of ST students stood at 33.9 per cent, second highest. The GER for students from all categories was 36.3 per cent which is second highest among all states after 44.3 per cent of Tamil Nadu.
The report also gave figures of enrolment of Muslim students in higher education from 2012-13 to 2015-16 which went up from 89,524 in 2012-13 to 1,07,631 in 2015-16. While there has been an increase in the number of Muslim boys as well as girls in higher education, there remains a gender gap. While enrolment in higher education increased among boys by around 27 per cent in the given time period, it increased by just about 13 per cent among girls.
Same is the case when it comes to GER for all categories. While GER among boys stood at 39.3 per cent, it was 33.4 per cent among girls. There is a need for efforts from TS government to increasing number of PhD intakes in the state as the number of students getting enrolled for PhD decline from 4,743 in 2012-13 to 4,133 in 2015-16, mainly due to lack of enough experienced faculty to guide PhD scholars in state-run universities and erratic PhD admissions by state universities.
Presence of a few universities in Telangana is also a reason behind low PhD scholars. Compared to 4,133 scholars in 21 universities in Telangana, there were 22,221 scholars in 58 universities in Tamil Nadu.
In 2015-16 number of students pursuing various courses in Telangana in regular mode
UG - 10,18,882
PG - 1,63,387
M.Phil - 583
PhD - 4,133
State performs well
TS stands sixth in the country having 2,454 colleges with 60 colleges per lakh population
Telangana has fifth highest number of foreign students(3032)
With 16,601 students pursuing nursing, TS is among top five states in India