India’s Higher Education transformed with greater access, improved quality, and enhanced gender inclusivity: Dharmendra Pradhan

New Delhi: This decade marks a transformative journey for India’s education landscape, reflecting our unwavering commitment to access, equity, and excellence, stated Shri Dharmendra Pradhan, while addressing a press conference in New Delhi today.

Shri Pradhan highlighted the progress in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education, which is as follows:

1. Expansion of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with a focus on improving access to higher education:

• Enhanced Access: Total HEIs increased by 13.8% from 51,534 in 2014-15 to 58,643 in 2022-23.
• University Growth: Universities grew by 59.6%, from 760 to 1,213, showcasing India’s commitment to world-class institutions.
• College Growth: Colleges increased by 21.1%, from 38,498 to 46,624, meeting the growing demand for higher education.
• Centrally Funded Institutions: 42 new institutions, including 8 Central Universities, 7 IITs, 8 IIMs, 02 IISERs & IISC , 01 NITs & IIEST, and 16 IIITs, were added from 2014 to 2024.

2. Growth in Student Enrollment

• Enrollment Surge: Total enrollment rose by 30.5%, from 3.42 crore in 2014-15 to 4.46 crore in 2022-23.
• Empowering Women: Female enrollment grew by 38.4% from 1.57 crore to 2.18 crore contributing to the gender parity, with significant gains of about 23 % in STEM courses, rising from 35.14 lakh to 43.03 lakh.

3. Mission Recruitment

• The government recruited 52,482 candidates from May 2014 to October 2024, more than twice of previous decade’s recruitment done i.e., 23,463.

4. One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)

• • Government has approved a new Central Sector Scheme, One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) for students, faculty, researchers and scientists of all disciplines, of Higher Educational Institutions under the management of the Central or State Government.
  • The “One Nation One Subscription” initiative aims to promote both core and interdisciplinary research by providing access to over 13,000 e-journals from 30 leading international publishers.
  • A total of about Rs.6,000 crore has been allocated for the scheme for 3 calendar years, 2025, 2026 and 2027.

5. Centers of Excellence in AI

• Three Centers of Excellence focusing on health, sustainable cities, and agriculture have been approved, with a financial outlay of ₹990 crore (2023-24 to 2027-28).

6. Research Parks

• Established in HEIs to promote a research ecosystem and Industry-Academia Connect.
• Before 2014: The IIT Madras Research Park was founded in 2008 and Research Parks at IIT Kharagpur and IIT Bombay, were also approved. (3 Research Parks)
• After 2014:  Government has established 6 new Research Parks, one each at IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Hyderabad and IISc Bangalore and IIT Gandhinagar. Further, 13 more Research Parks will be set up at IIT Bhubneswar, IIT Roorkee, IIT (BHU), IIT(ISM) Dhanbad, IIT Ropar, IIT Jodhpur, IIT Patna and IIT Indore, IIT Palakkad, IIT Tirupati, IIT Dharwad, IIT Jammu and IIT Bhilai

7. Promotion of Multi Lingualism

• National Level Entrance Examinations for admission to HEIs like JEE (Main), NEET(UG), CUET(UG) are conducted in 13 Languages, i.e. Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and English.

8. Academic Bank of Credit
   • Launched in July 2021
   • 2,247 HEIs registered and 1 Crore student Ids mapped with more than 2 crore records
9. SWAYAM
   • Launched on 9th July, 2017.
   • More than 3800 courses developed and 4.7 crore enrolment have been made since its inception
   • To enhance employability of students, SWAYAM Plus has been launched in February 2024.320 courses have been developed in collaboration with 55 leading Industry partners.
10. SAMARTH
    • SAMARTH is a software to digitize Higher Education Campuses.
    • More than 12000 HEIs have adopted this solution.
    • In current semester, 46 lakh students are enrolled and availing the facility.
11. SATHEE
    • SATHEE was started in 2023 in collaboration with IIT Kanpur to provide free coaching classes for competitive examinations.
    • SATHEE is providing support for Engineering, Medical, SSC, Banking, Agriculture and for university entrance examinations, esp. CUET.
    • 10.3 lakh registered users.
12. Ranking

NIRF

• • Launched in 2016
  • The number of applications increased from 3,565 in 2016 to 10,845 in 2024.
  • Number of institutions increased from 2,426 in 2016 to 6,517 in 2024

QS ranking:

• In QS WUR 2025, 46 Indian HEI’s were ranked compared to just 11 in 2015 edition, a 318% increase in last 10 years.
• Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) has ranked top most among the Indian institutions and has significantly improved its ranking, climbing from 149th position in the 2024 to 118th in the 2025 QS World University Rankings.

13. Book Promotion
    • There has been substantive increase in the footfall in National Book Fair organized by Ministry of Education
    • In 2014, the footfall was 4 lakhs, which has seen an exponential growth and now it has reached 19 lakhs in 2024
14. Smart India Hackathon
    • Started in 2017, over 2 lakh teams and approx. 14 lakh students have participated since inception.
    • Team participation has increased, from 7,531 in 2017 to 49,892 in 2024, a 7-fold increase.
    • During same period, ideas submitted has also seen an exponential growth from 7500 to 57,000 (approx. 8-fold increase).