Higher Education in India: A Geographical Study

Abstract

In the light on the ancient times, there were prominent universities of Nalanda, Takhashila, Vallabhi and Vikramshila which attract the scholars from all over the world in the field of higher education. The first three modern universities were established at Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Madras (now Chennai) in 1857 on the pattern of London University. Although the growth of higher education in British period was very slow. On the other side of scale, India has made significant growth since independence in terms of institutions, volume of enrolment and diversification of educational programmes. Higher education provides the capable manpower trained in arts, science, medicine, computer applications, agriculture and various technical and professional courses.  At the national level, the number of universities is increased by twenty one times from 30 in 1951 to 642 in 2011. Against this, colleges increased by fifty times from 695 in 1951 to 34852 in 2011. This paper attempts to analyse the existing scenario of higher education in India. The main objective is to examine the spatial distribution of higher education among the major states[1] of India. This has been done to make a comparative study among the states in terms of number of colleges and universities served to area and population contexts and secondly to check the inter-state disparity in gross enrolment ratio of the states. A geographical approach has been adopted to deal with these aspects of higher education in making a comparison.

Keywords: Higher Education, Colleges, Universities, Gross Enrolment Ratio, Major States.

[1] Major states are Haryana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Punjab, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Odisha, Assam, Chhattisgarh Madhya Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.