There are many undergraduate programmes in our country but Engineering is the only programme for which the enrolments have declined. Though there is an increase in the number of overall admission figures, admission in Engineering is the lowest in five years as per the All India Survey on Higher Education(AISHE), disclosed by the Education Ministry.
Decreasing Numbers:
According to AISHE there is a decline in the number of admissions for BTech and BE by 10% from 40.85 lakhs in 2016-17 to 36.63 Lakhs in 2020-21. Though there is a marginal increase in the enrollment figures of 20000 for Engineering programmes for the academic year of 2019-20 and 2020-21, the total admission figures are the lowest in five years.
Engineering was at the third position 5 years ago:
Five years back enrolment in UG engineering programmes was the third highest enrolment, Bachelor of Arts(BA) was having the highest enrolment numbers and Bachelor of Science was at the second position. Whereas in the last five years, the admission numbers in the BTech and BE programmes have dropped to fourth position, Bachelor of Commerce has jumped up to a third position with 37.9 Lakh student enrolments.
The rise in the numbers of BA, BSc, BCom admissions:
BA programme enrolments for the academic year 2020-21 accounted for 33.5% of the total figure of enrolment, BSc for 15.5%, BCom for 13.9% whereas engineering and technology accounted for 11.9% of the total share of enrolment figures.
There is a similar drop in the MTech programme admission as the number of students have decreased from 1.6 Lakh in 2016-17 to 1.38 Lakh in 2020-21.
Admissions for other UG programmes have risen in the last five years as enrolment numbers in BA have increased to 85 lakhs in 2020-21 from 80 lakhs in 2016-17, BSc admission numbers increased from 44 lakhs to 47 lakhs and BCom admission increased to 37 lakhs in 2020 from 34 lakhs in 2016.
Current enrolment figures for Engineering
According to the data, currently, BTech has 23.20 lakh students enrolment out of which 28.7% are women. In BE out of the total figure of 13.42 lakh students 28.5% are women. Among the engineering streams the most popular branch among the students in computer engineering, followed by Mechanical engineering, Civil engineering, and Electrical engineering.