Lok Sabha Question No. 49 (STARRED), answered on 2023-07-24
Subject: Delay in releasing AISHE Report
Ministry: Education
Asked by: D. Ravikumar

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF HIGHER EDUCATION

## LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION No. 49 ANSWERED ON 24.07.2023

## Delay in releasing AISHE Report

## *49. SHRI RAVIKUMAR D.:

Will the Minister of EDUCATION be pleased to state:

- (a) the reason for the inordinate delay in releasing the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21 report; and
- (b) whether the Government has taken any steps to release the AISHE Report and if so, the details thereof?

## ANSWER

## MINISTER OF EDUCATION (SHRI DHARMENDRA PRADHAN)

- (a) and (b): A statement is laid on the table of the House.

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STATEMENT  REFERRED  TO  IN  REPLY  TO  PART  (a)  and  (b)  OF  THE  LOK SABHA  STARRED  QUESTION  NO.  49  ANSWERED  ON  24.07.2023  ASKED  BY SHRI  RAVIKUMAR  D.,  HON'BLE  MEMBER  OF  PARLIAMENT  REGARDING DELAY IN RELEASING AISHE REPORT

- (a) The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) is the comprehensive source of Higher  Education  Statistics  in  the  country.    Data  on  various  parameters,  such  as Enrolment, Institution information, Teacher Information, etc are uploaded by Higher Education  Institutions  (HEIs)  registered  under  AISHE  in  the  portal  aishe.gov.in,  in specially  designed  formats  of  data  collection.  The  AISHE  Surveys  have  been conducted  annually  since  2011.    The  AISHE  Survey  is  conducted  through  the  cooperation and support of the State Governments, Universities, etc.

The Report of the 2019-20 Survey and launch of the 2020-21 Survey was affected by the  unprecedented  global  Covid  outbreak.  The  Academic  Session  2020-21  and Admission process in the HEIs got considerably delayed, extending upto December, 2020  and  in  a  few  cases  even  after  that.  The  comprehensive  data  on  coursewise/Programme-wise  enrolments  gets  available  in  HEIs  only  after  the  admission process is fully completed. Further, the severe outbreak of 2 nd wave of Covid in 2021, in  which  staff  of  various  Departments,  State  Governments  and  Universities  got affected, also delayed the launch of the Survey.

In AISHE 2020-21, the data collection mechanism was upgraded from old system of data filling in the Adobe  Acrobat format, to a dynamic, user friendly and technologically upgraded Web Data Capture Format (DCF) platform by the National Informatics  Centre  (NIC).Till  2019-20,  the  Adobe  software  (windows  2008)  was being used for data collection in AISHE which was hosted on physical server instead of cloud Server. Hence, for compliance with NIC IT infra-Policy and to upgrade the AISHE  portal  with  new  IT  features,  Web-DCF  was  introduced  in  AISHE  for collecting  the  information  during  year  2021  and  was  used  for  first  time  in  AISHE 2020-21  Survey.    Consequently,  functional  testing  was  done  followed  by  detailed Security  Audit  of  the  system  and  trainings  to  the  State  Nodal  Officers/HEIs  before operationalisation of new system.

Being the first DCF Survey, the earlier data structure and reports had to be modified. This had to be tested/matched with the unit level data of the Survey.  In view of this, intense scrutiny was undertaken after closure of the Survey.

- (b) The AISHE 2020-21 Report, has already been released in January 2023.  It may be mentioned that the enrolment of the country has increased from 3.85 crore in 2019-20 to 4.14 crore in 2020-21.

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