The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), conducted by the Ministry of Education, has revealed that total student enrolment in higher education in 2023-24 reached 45 million, 17 per cent higher than in the academic year 2019-20. This is the first AISHE release since January 2024.

Dr. Rahul Choudaha was quoted in the Times Higher Education article about the timeliness and relevance of the survey findings given that the data is now nearly three years old.

While a survey of this scale will naturally take time to collate, “data with a lag of almost three years isn’t a planning tool any more; it’s a historical record.

If AISHE data is going to inform policy, resource allocation, and institutional decision-making the way it’s meant to, it needs to move back to a predictable, annual cadence. Irregular release cycles undermine the very purpose of the survey, however rich the underlying data is.

This challenge is not unique to India, highlighting the 18-month lag in the data provided by the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency. Some lag between data collection and publication seems to be a structural feature of higher-education reporting everywhere, not a limitation unique to India.

The article noted that women’s share in STEM enrolment also increased to 44 per cent in 2023-24. STEM enrolment across the board is the highest that it has been, recorded at 10.2 million. The growth in STEM reflects India’s continued interest in strengthening national industries related to digital technologies, science and innovation.

The total number of international students pursuing higher education in India has also increased to a total of 58,134 in 2023-24.