India Tomorrow
New Delhi, Dec 8: Muslims and disabled persons are the most under-represented groups in higher education in India, reveals the India Exclusion Report 2017-2018 released by the Delhi-based Centre for Equity Studies earlier this week.
All marginalized groups including women, Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC), and Tribes (ST) have increased their share. But, Persons with Disability (PwDs) and Muslim are the two groups still seriously under-represented in higher education.
In the five-year period (2010-11 and 2015-16), the share of PwDs (who form 2.2 percent of the population) increased from 0.19 to 0.21 percent in higher education while Muslims, who constitute 14 percent of the country’s population, saw their share in higher education increase from 3.8 percent to just 4.7 percent.
In the same period, the share of women increased from 44 to 46 percent, for STs from 4.4 to 4.9 percent, for SCs from 11 to 13.9 percent, and for OBCs from 27.6 to 33.8 percent.
The figures are from the annual reports of the All India Survey of Higher Education (AISHE).
The share of upper castes, who still have lion’s share in higher education, has also come down from 51 per cent to 40.6 per cent between 2010-11 and 2015-16, says the study whose highlights were captured in a report of The Indian Express.
