Rajasthan records its lowest enrolment growth in higher education in 18 years

Rajasthan recorded its lowest ever Growth of 0.14% in the gross enrolment ratio (GER) in higher Education in 2022-23, a phenomenon that has baffled experts and plunged into question the Ashok Gehlot government’s claims about the state emerging as an education hub in the country.
As per

the government’s data, the latest growth rate is the lowest in the last 18 years, as enrolment data is available only from 2005. In 2022-23, a little over 2,000 students were added to the previous year’s tally of 13.02 lakh. What has surfaced as an alarming situation is that for the first time, the enrolment of boys has decreased by 1.52% from 2021-22 despite the state having opened 117 new colleges in the last one year.

In absolute numbers, while 13.02 lakh students enrolled at all levels in the state in 2021-22, it was only 13.04 lakh in 2022-23. Experts say that considering the rise in Population in the state, the Average rise in enrolment every year should be at least around 5%.

As per the report available on the website of the department of higher education, General-EWS andScheduled Tribes(ST) recorded a negative growth (-2.89% and -1.68% respectively) in enrolment while that for SC and OBC remained marginally up (1.89%

and 1.45% respectively).

An analysis of the growth figures of the last five years makes the fall in enrolment growth in 2022-23 hard to understand. In 2018-19, the growth rate was 5.12% and in the following years it was 7.16% (2019-20), 5.26% (2020-21), 3.41% (2021-22) and 0.14% (2022-23).