From school to PhD, the SC share of students is lower at every stage: 17.7% of school students, 10.0% of PhD students

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What this shows

The share of students who are SC at each stage from school to PhD, and how SC enrolment ratios compare with all students at each level, in 2025-26 (school) and 2023-24 (higher education).

What it does not show: How many SC students who start school reach a degree or a PhD: no published table follows the same students, so the stages are snapshots of different years and different counts.

Sources

Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education, Government of India, UDISE+ 2025-26 (existing structure), Tables 2.4, 6.1 and 6.2. Primary source.
Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India, All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2023-24, Final Report, Tables 11, 14, 27(a), 30(a), 35, 45 and 47. Primary source.
Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India, Ministry of Home Affairs, Census of India 2011, Release of Data Highlights: Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST), 30 April 2013, Proportion of SC/ST Population, India – 2001, 2011, dated 30 Apr 2013. Primary source.
National Statistics Office, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India, NSS Report No. 585, Household Social Consumption on Education in India (75th round, July 2017 to June 2018), Tables (67) and (70). Primary source.

Analysis by The Dalit Project, as on 12 Oct 2026.

Read these with the numbers

School and higher education are from years two apart: school figures are for 2025-26, from UDISE+, and higher-education figures for 2023-24, from AISHE. Comparing a school stage with a higher-education stage compares different years as well as different students.
The stages come from two surveys and two years: schools in 2025-26, higher education in 2023-24. They show where SC students are at each stage in those years, not what happened to one group of students. No published table follows SC students from school to college.
AISHE’s totals are estimates for all institutions, including those that did not respond; its programme tables (Tables 11 and 35) count only the institutions that responded, so their totals are lower.
UDISE+ says its figures from 2022-23 onwards, built from individual student records, are not comparable with 2021-22 or earlier, so no school series is shown.
The gross enrolment ratios in higher education rest on population projections from Census 2011, as the AISHE report says. The SC share of the population will be known again only from Census 2027.
Neither survey publishes SC dropout rates by level for India: UDISE+ Table 6.13 gives dropout rates for all students only.

Key terms

SC: Scheduled Castes, the castes listed under Article 341 of the Constitution.
UDISE+: Unified District Information System for Education Plus, the Ministry of Education’s yearly count of schools, teachers and students.
AISHE: All India Survey on Higher Education, the Ministry of Education’s yearly survey of universities, colleges and standalone institutions.
Gross enrolment ratio (GER): Students enrolled at a level, whatever their age, per 100 people in the age group for that level (for higher education, ages 18 to 23).
Central educational institution: A university or institute set up, maintained or aided by the Union Government, such as a central university or an Institute of National Importance (the IITs, NITs, AIIMS and others named by an Act of Parliament), where the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006, reserves seats at admission.
Out-turn: AISHE’s word for students who passed out of a programme in the year.
Pre-primary to class 12: The whole of school as UDISE+ counts it: pre-primary, primary (classes 1 to 5), upper primary (6 to 8), secondary (9 and 10) and higher secondary (11 and 12).

Changelog and corrections

Version 3: Version 3: UDISE+ 2025-26 has been published, so the school stage moves to it (Tables 2.4, 6.1 and 6.2); higher education stays on AISHE 2023-24, so the two stages are now two years apart; the gap is noted under the charts that set them side by side and in the caveats. Version 2: adds the 15% reserved and 16.6% population lines, SC students and teachers by type of university (AISHE Tables 27(a) and 30(a)), an All programmes row, and household spending per student from NSS Report 585 (2017-18). Version 1: UDISE+ 2024-25 and AISHE 2023-24.

How corrections work. Every change is listed here.

Cite this

The Dalit Project, “From school to PhD, the SC share of students is lower at every stage: 17.7% of school students, 10.0% of PhD students”, version 3, data.dalitproject.org/school-to-phd/, as on 12 Oct 2026.