The All India Survey on Higher Education was launched by the Ministry of Education, then the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in 2010-11, with 30 September 2010 as the first reference date. It is a census-style annual survey in which every higher education institution registers on a central portal and uploads data on enrolment, teaching staff, infrastructure, examination results and finances. Because it covers all three institutional types - universities, colleges and standalone institutions - it is the only complete picture of the sector, and it is the basis on which the Gross Enrolment Ratio is computed. GER in higher education is the ratio of total enrolment, regardless of the student's age, to the population in the 18 to 23 age group. That definition matters: a GER above 100 is possible in principle, and a rising GER can reflect either more students or a shrinking cohort, so the enrolment figure and the ratio must always be read together. Here both moved in the same direction, which is what makes the decade's expansion a genuine widening of access rather than a demographic artefact.

The review is unusual in naming its own weak spots. The first is employability: with annual out-turn now above 1.09 crore graduates, more than 29 per cent of tertiary-educated youth face delays in finding work, which points to a mismatch between what institutions teach and what employers need rather than to a shortage of degrees. The second is disability access, where the gender pattern reverses: enrolment of persons with benchmark disabilities stood at 34,080 men against about 20,000 women in 2023-24, so the gender parity that the sector achieved overall has not reached women with disabilities. A third gap is implicit in the numbers - STEM enrolment grew only 11.5 per cent over the decade, far slower than the 31.5 per cent overall and dramatically slower than PhD or integrated-programme growth, so STEM's share of the whole has actually fallen. For an answer on higher education, these three are more useful than the headline growth figures, because they are what a policy question asks about.