ALL INDIA SURVEY ON HIGHER EDUCATION: DOES THE DATA IMPACT POLICIES?

Higher education institutions have three core functions, namely teaching and learning, research and community engagement. In a country like India education surveys involving million of students enrolled in various Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with low response rates can be a major concern. It is a big challenge for the country to achieve the target of gross enrolment ratio (GER) in HEIs to 50 percent by 2035 as set by the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020. The paper is focuses on the issues related to non-responses in submission of student enrolment data or non participation by HEIs in the All India Survey on Higher Education Survey (AISHE), which is annually conducted by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. The paper pinpoints the bottlenecks created in the higher education system with some pointers to the problems. The present study is an attempt to explore and highlight the response of uploading or providing the statistical information to AISHE to highlight the issue which may impact the purpose of the Survey itself. The study elucidates the growth and comparison of the response and non-response of the Universities and their participation in All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE). It also aims to examine the types of the Universities responding and non-responding and their trends. The paper is expected to help the policy makers and researchers in understanding the moving trend of higher education and its direct and indirect impact on the higher education due to non-response of the Institutions.