Uttar Pradesh has the highest number of colleges in the country, followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka, according to the government's All India Survey for Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-21.
The top 10 states in terms of number of colleges in India include Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Telangana and Kerala, each having at least 29 or more colleges per lakh population.
According to the survey report released by the Ministry of Education, in Uttar Pradesh, there are 8,114 colleges and for every one lakh population there are 32 colleges.
Similarly, Maharashtra comes second with 4,532 colleges and 34 colleges per lakh population. Karnataka comes at third position with 4,233 colleges and 62 colleges per lakh population, whereas Rajasthan is at fourth position with 3,694 colleges and 40 colleges per lakh population. Tamil Nadu comes at fifth position with 2,667 colleges and has college density of 40, the report said.
Madhya Pradesh comes at sixth position with 2,610 colleges and 29 colleges per lakh population, whereas Andhra Pradesh is at seventh position with 2,601 colleges and 49 colleges per lakh population. At eighth position Gujarat has 2,267 colleges and 31 colleges for every one lakh population, it added.
There are 35.8 per cent colleges, which run only single programme, out of which 82.2 per cent are privately managed. Among these, 30.9 per cent colleges run B.Ed courses only. Majority of colleges are smaller in terms of enrolment. 23.6 per cent of the colleges are having enrolment less than 100 and 48.5 per cent of the colleges have a student strength of 100 to 500 which means that 65.1 per cent of the colleges enroll less than 500 students.
Only 4 pc colleges have enrolment of more than 3,000. Out of 41,600 responding colleges, 8,903 (21.4 pc) are government colleges, 5,658 (13.3 pc) are private (aided) and 27,039 (65 pc) are private (unaided), it said.