Bengaluru:  The gap between girls and boys in higher education institutes seems to be narrowing as 49% of the students in colleges are now girls, according to the latest All India Survey on Higher Education.

The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2019-20 released on Thursday also revealed that apart from more females being enrolled in MPhil, postgraduate and certificate levels, they continue to dominate in medical sciences, BA and BSc programmes. However, it is in the professional and technical courses where female enrolment is significantly lower.

The survey for 2019-20, released on Thursday, showed that during the five-year period from 2015-16 to 2019-20, there has been a 11.4% growth in student enrolment. The rise in female enrolment during the period was 18.2%.

Two years after the gender gap closed in undergraduate science, for the first time, there are as many women as there are men enrolled in the Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) programme, according to the latest findings of the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE).

Until five years ago, there were 90 female students enrolled in B.Com for every 100 men. However, in 2019-20 there were 100 women for every 100 male students in this programme. In absolute numbers, in 2019-20, 41.6 lakh were enrolled in B.Com, of which 20.3 lakh were women and 21.3 lakh were men.

The Gross Enrolment Ratio of females stands at 27.3%, which is better in comparison to that of males 26.9%. The survey also found a very high and sharp increase of female participation at MA, MSc and MCom levels during the last five years.

"In the last five years from 2015-16 to 2019-20, there has been a growth of 11.4% in student enrolment. The rise in female enrolment in higher education during the period is 18.2%. The Gender Parity Index (GPI) in higher education in 2019-20 is 1.01 against 1.00 in 2018-19, indicating an improvement in the relative access to higher education for females of the eligible age group compared to males," the report stated.

As per the report, the number of female students is lowest for institutes under state private open university (2,499) followed by institutes under state legislature act (3,702) whereas the share is highest in state public universities.

"Share of female students is lowest for institutes of national importance (24.7%) followed by deemed universities government (33.4%) and state private universities (34.7%), whereas the share of female students for institutes under State Legislature Act is 61.2%." The percentage of female students in state public universities is 50.1% and in central universities it is 48.1%.

While at master’s level for arts, science and commerce there has been a sharp increase in female participation between 2015-16 and 2019-20, "it is still very low at undergraduate courses like BCA, BBA, BTech or BE and LLB".