More girl students pursuing higher education in state

Prayagraj: If choosing the path of higher education is a sign of women empowerment, then the girls of the state have displayed an impressive show. In terms of girl students, registering in institutions of higher education in the state, both universities and colleges, the fairer gender is far ahead when compared to their male counterparts.In the current academic session (2023-24 session), a total of 54,76,441 students have taken admission in traditional courses of which 26,68,971 are boys while 28,07,470 girls, who have opted for higher education, a difference of over 2 lakh.According to the annual report prepared and submitted to the state govt by the higher education department located in the Directorate of Education here at Prayagraj, more than 54 lakh youths have taken admission in 62 universities and 7925 colleges.Compared to last year, there has been an increase of more than 10 lakh students. There were record admissions in state universities and colleges in the current academic session after seven years.In the 2023-24 session, 54,76,441 students have taken admission in traditional courses, which is the highest after the 2017-18 session.In the last session (2022-23), 44,18,809 youths had taken admission in institutions of higher education in the state. Not only this, the number of girls among the total students taking admission in higher education in this session was more than that of boys.This increase is being considered important towards achieving the target of increasing the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher education. The target is to increase it to 50% by 2030 which was 28.4% in 2021-22.The number of girls pursuing higher education and thus taking admission in colleges and universities across the state had been higher than boys in previous years too. In academic session 2022-23, a total of 44,18,809 students were registered for higher education of which 21,83,695 were boys and 22,35,114 were girls. Likewise, in academic session 2021-22, 45,40,605 students were registered for higher education of which 21,77,467 were boys while the number of girls were 23,63,138.The gap between boys and girls was far more in the academic session 2020-21 wherein of the total of 50,21,277 registration, there were 18,60,220 boys while the number of girls was 31,61,057.In 2019-20, the total number of students was 41,83,992 of which 19,69,206 were boys and 22,14,786 girls. In 2018-19, there were a total of 43,82,527 students of which 20,74,205 were boys while 23,08,322 were girls.However, it was in 2017-18, when the number of boys were slightly higher as compared to girls registering for higher education. Of the total of 55,74,638 students, the number of boys was 27,97,501 while the number of girls was 27,77,137.