Special Report, New Delhi:  Rajasthan is seeing wave of changes in education infrastructure (university education) as it overtakes Uttar Pradesh in highest number of Universities among states. With 64 universities in the state, Rajasthan represents 8.4% of total universities in India (760 at all India level). Rajasthan is also leading India having highest number of private universities (32), which is half of its total universities.

As per CII-Annual Status on Higher Education Report 2016, which was released on 8 November 2016, the top five states with the highest number of universities include Rajasthan (64, 8.4% of total in India), Uttar Pradesh (63, 8.3 %), Tamil Nadu (58, 7.6%), Karnataka (51, 6.7%) and Gujarat (49, 6.4%). Gujarat and Karnataka stand jointly first in India in terms of total number of state public universities (25 each, 7.9% each of total state public universities. Rajasthan (32, 17.7% of total private universities) has emerged as the hub of private university activities in India, followed by Uttar Pradesh (20, 11%) and Gujarat (18, 9.9%).

In terms of number of deemed universities, Tamil Nadu stands first with 28 number of deemed universities (23% of total deemed universities). In terms of specialisation, the country is reported to have 430 general universities (58.1% of total), 90 technical universities (12.2%), 46 agricultural universities (6.2%), 45 medical universities (6.1%), 60 other universities (8.1%) and 20 law universities (2.7%) with all other universities comprising (6.6%).

India has a total of 38,498 colleges (as of 2014-15) with Uttar Pradesh ranking first (5,337, 15.6% of total colleges), followed by Maharashtra (4351, 13.2%), Karnataka (3265, 9.5%), Tamil Nadu (2452, 7.1%) and Rajasthan (2190, 6.4%).

The average student enrolment per college in India is 715, with Bihar (2081) reported to have the highest average enrolment in colleges among all states, followed by Jharkhand (2025) and Chandigarh (1741). Total enrolment of students in colleges in India is around 251.77 lakhs.

In terms of College Density (Colleges per lakh population), Telangana reports the highest figure with 60 (60 colleges per lakh population). Karnataka has 49 colleges per lakh population and Andhra Pradesh has 47 colleges per lakh population while Kerala has 41 and Haryana has 35 colleges per lakh population.

Interestingly, the annual survey report of CII mentioned that the five southern states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, which constitute 21% of the total population of the country, account for 35% of law universities, 33.3% of veterinary universities, 28.3% of other universities, 24.4% of medical universities, 21.4% of general universities, 21.1% of technical universities and 23.4% of all the universities in India.

India has a total of 760 universities, 38,498 colleges and 12,276 stand-alone institutes. The average enrollment of students per University is 8404. The average enrollment of students per college is 731 and the average enrollment of students per stand-alone institute is 267.

In terms of growth, opening of new private universities  is growing at a faster rate than government universities. The number of government universities (including central, institutes of national importance, state public, government deemed and a few others) have gone up from 439 in 2010-11 to 494 in 2014-15, growing at a CAGR of 2.99%. However, the number of private universities (including state private and private deemed) have gone up from 181 in 2010-11 to 266 in 2014-15, growing at a much faster CAGR of 10.10%.