The enrolment of female students is lowest in the institutions of national importance, followed by state private open universities and government deemed universities, according to the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE).
The report, which was released by Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar today, said the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education in the country is 25.8 per cent, which is calculated for 18-23 years of age group.
"Share of female students is lowest in Institutions of National Importance, followed by state private open universities and deemed universities (government). The total enrolment in higher education has been estimated to be 36.6 million with 19.2 million boys and 17.4 million girls. The girls constitute 47.6 per cent of the enrolment," the survey report for 2017-18 said.
The GER for male population is 26.3 per cent and for females it is 25.4 per cent. For Scheduled Castes, it is 21.8 per cent and for Scheduled Tribes it is 15.9 per cent as compared to the national GER of 25.8 per cent, it said.
More males were awarded PhD degrees during 2017, maximum of them being in science stream.
"34,000 students were awarded PhD-level degrees during 2017, with 20,179 males and 14,221 females. At PhD-level, maximum number of students turn out is in science stream, followed by Engineering and Technology. On the other hand, at PG-level maximum students turn out is observed in social science followed by management stream," the survey report said.
Uttar Pradesh comes at number one with the highest student enrolment, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
The total number of foreign students enrolled in higher education is 46,114 and top 10 countries constitute 63.4 per cent of the total foreign students enrolled.
The AISHE was initiated in the year 2011 to prepare a robust database on higher education.
Since then, seeing the usefulness of data collected during the first year of survey, the government decided to make this survey an annual exercise of data collection in the higher education sector.