Student enrolments in higher studies rose by 7.5% in 2020­21: AISHE data

Student enrolments in higher studies rose by 7.5% in 2020­21: AISHE data

Subject: Scheme

Section: Education

The Union Education Ministry on Sunday released data from the All India Sur vey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2020­2021, which showed a 7.5% increase in student enrolments across the country from the 2019­20 figures, with the total enrolments reaching 4.13 crore.

The survey revealed that in 2020­21, when the COVID­19 pandemic began, there was a 7% rise in enrolments in distance education programmes. The data showed two lakhs more Scheduled Caste students, about three lakhs more Scheduled Tribe students and six lakhs more

National Education Policy 2020

National Education Policy 2020 was launched by the Prime Minister in July 2020. In the year following that, a number of initiatives have been taken by the DoHE-

1. For integration of Vocational education into the higher education system (a) UGC(Institutions Deemed to be University) Regulation 2019 has been amended; and (b) guidelines have been Issued by UGC and AICTE to enable Higher Education Institutions( HEIs) offer Apprenticeship/Internship embedded degree programme.
2. National Apprenticeship Training Scheme has been extended for the next five years with an outlay of Rs. 3054 crore which will make, through apprenticeship, around 9 lakh students employable. Under the scheme students will be given apprenticeship in the emerging and frontier technology such as Artificial Intelligence, drone technology, new evolving and emergent areas including expertise required for Production Linked Incentive Scheme, and PM Gati Shakti Programme of the Government.
3. Apprenticeship Scheme and Internship Embedded course will create a sustainable skilling eco-system. The scope of the National Apprenticeship Training Scheme has been broadened to give apprentices to students from humanities, commerce and science besides engineering stream.
4. In order to enable students avail internship, an Internship Portal has been launched by the AICTE. The portal currently has 12.35 lakh internships, 73 lakh students and 38,650 employers registered on it.
5. Graduate-level, master’s and doctoral education in large multidisciplinary universities, while providing rigorous research-based specialization, would also provide opportunities for multidisciplinary work, including in academia, government, and industry. Accordingly, the Academic Bank of Credit was launched on 29.07.2021 by Prime Minister. This academic bank would digitally store the academic credits earned from various recognized HEIs so that the degrees from an HEI can be awarded taking into account credits earned. The UGC has provided necessary enabling mechanism to the HEIs by way of regulations.
6. For enabling multiple entry and exit points, thus, removing currently prevalent rigid boundaries and creating new possibilities for life-long learning, guidelines on Multiple Entry /Exit in Academic Programme in Higher Education Institutions have been issued by the UGC.
7. To enhance Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), online teaching and learning is one of the options. Accordingly, UGC has notified Open Distance Learning (ODL) and Online Programmes Regulations, 2020 ; and UGC (Credit Framework for online Course through SWAYAM) Regulation 2021 which has broad-based the eligibility of HEIs to offer Online Courses, as well as enhanced the percentage of courses permitted towards credit from 20 % to 40% by using MOOCs SWAYAM.
8. To enable Institute of Eminence (IOEs) offer offshore courses (for globalization of education), UGC has amended UGC (Institution of Eminence Deemed to be Universities) Regulation.
9. For promotion of Indian Knowledge System, arts and culture a knowledge Cell has been set up in the Ministry of Education and in All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).
10. To achieve the goal of using the mother tongue/local language as a medium of instruction, and/or offer programmes bilingually, in order to increase access and GER and also to promote the strength, usage, and vibrancy of all Indian languages, JEE (Main) and NEET (UG), the all India exams for entry in Engineering and Medical colleges, have been conducted in 12 languages in addition to English. Furthermore, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has given approval to nineteen engineering colleges to impart engineering courses in six Indian languages across ten states from the Academic year 2021-22.
11. AICTE has also developed a tool called “AICTE Translation Automation Al Tool” with a vision to translate English language online courses into eleven different Indian languages for access to a more significant number of students in the rural areas.

 SWAYAM

1. One hundred and fifty-four (154) Universities have come on board for accepting credit transfer for courses offered through SWAYAM platform till now.
2. From the academic year 2022-23 onwards the first year courses in Arts, Commerce, and Science & Engineering are planned to be made available on SWAYAM platform in 12 languages in addition to English to help students from vernacular medium to study well and excel. Al and ML shall be used for this purpose.

 e-PGPathshala: Online Gateway of PG Courses

1. The National Mission on Education through information Communication Technology (NME-ICT) is envisaged as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme to leverage the potential of ICT, in teaching and learning process for the benefit of all the learners in Higher Education institutions at any-time anywhere mode.
2. It is one of the largest OER repositories in India having content of PG courses.
3. It provides high quality e-content for PG programmes for the benefit of the teachers and students.
4. It also Address disparities of various kinds such as rich/poor, urban/rural, cast and religion-based disparities, geographical disparities, regional disparities etc.
5. 778 papers, with 23000 plus e- modules in 67 Subjects have been developed, out of 23 subjects covers the entire syllabus/curriculum.
6. About 1.3 crore plus visitors including international visitors have visited the e-PG Pathshala site. The details of international visitors are: USA :- 11843, UK : – 7190, Australia:- 8615, Russia : – 13579, Pakistan : – 7215, UAE : -3924, China :- 28745, New Zealand:- 366, Japan :- 6722, Germany : 23592.
7. Total YouTube subscriber on Vidya-Mitra Channel is 5,57,000 with a 63,864,531 video views.
8. e-PGPathshala content is being used by universities for blended learning.
9. Content of the e-PG Pathshala has been distributed through I-LMS to several universities for their learning Management System.
10. Two by-products viz. e-Pathya (Offline Access to all e-PG Videos) and e-Adhyayan (e-Books): has been developed.
11. Recently, due to COVID-19 Lockdown the ePGPathshala website has been used widely across all Universities and several Universities have used ePGPathshala content as a flip class room.
12. UGC constituted an appraisal/outcome review Committee for review of e-PG Pathshala Project in 2020. And The Committee felt that e-PG Pathshala, has proved to be very useful to faculty as well as the students as an open education resource and strongly recommended to continue this scheme and recommended that Efforts should be made to translate the courses uploaded on e-PG Pathshala Portal initially in eight regional languages viz. Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bangla, and Gujarati.