The Erosion of Social Sciences in Indian Higher Education: Insights and Implications


Introduction

India’s higher education landscape has witnessed significant expansion in access and enrollment over the past decade, yet this growth masks deep-seated challenges in specific disciplines, particularly the social sciences. A recent analysis by Kishor K. Podh highlights a troubling “collapse” driven by funding shortages, research stagnation, and the proliferation of precarious faculty positions (Podh, 2025).

This review article examines these concerns, drawing on Podh’s critique while integrating broader data from official sources, including the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) and the Unified District Information on School Education Plus (UDISE+). By contextualising the issues within the feeder system of school education, we reveal how systemic neglect threatens not just academic output but India’s democratic fabric. The discussion also references related analyses on educationforallinindia.com, emphasising the need for policy reforms aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020’s vision of a knowledge-driven society.

Review of Key Challenges in Social Sciences

Podh’s article paints a stark picture of institutional decay in social sciences, attributing it to policy inertia, underfunding, and structural flaws. Central to this is India’s stagnant research and development (R&D) investment, which hovers at 0.6-0.7% of GDP – well below the global average of 1.8% and trailing peers such as South Korea (4.8%) and China (2.4%) (Podh, 2025). Within this limited pool, the social sciences receive less than an approx 3% of national R&D expenditure, according to the Department of Science and Technology. The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), a key pillar for the field, has seen its budget halved in real terms since 2014 after inflation adjustments, leading to delayed fellowships, reduced grants, and curtailed institutional activities.

This fiscal squeeze exacerbates a “research void,” where universities shift from knowledge production to mere teaching hubs. Podh notes that disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and political science, which rely on fieldwork and long-term engagement, suffer the most. Globally, this manifests in India’s marginal presence in top journals: the U.S., with 16% of global GDP, dominates 65% of outputs in leading economics publications, while South Asia contributes a “mere fraction” (Podh, 2025, citing Aigner et al., 2025). In the Stanford Global Research Ranking 2024, social sciences and management account for just 1.7% of India’s share.

Equally alarming is the surge in guest and ad-hoc faculty. Public universities grapple with vacancies that have gone unfilled for years – or even decades – while many state institutions rely on contractual staff for the majority of teaching roles (Podh, 2025). These “academic gig workers” earn meagre salaries (often insufficient for basic needs), lack job security, and are barred from research leadership, fostering exhaustion and demoralisation. This two-tier system – permanent faculty handling administration, precarious staff bearing teaching loads – mirrors global trends but hits India harder, undermining mentorship and cumulative knowledge building.

However, this critique must be balanced against progress in the broader education eco-system, which indirectly supports social sciences by expanding the student base. School education, as the pipeline to higher studies, has achieved substantial access at lower levels, per UDISE+ 2024-25 data (Mehta, 2025a). Higher education enrollment has also surged, with the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) rising from 23.7% in 2014-15 to 28.4% in 2021-22 (Ministry of Education, 2025). Projections suggest it could approach 30% by 2024-25, though achieving NEP 2020’s 50% target by 2035 remains ambitious (Mehta, 2025b). Undergraduate arts and social sciences programs have benefited, with BA enrollments growing from approximately 9 million in 2014-15 to nearly 13 million by 2021-22. Quantity is rising; quality of teaching and research, especially outside a handful of elite institutions, is not.

Yet, quality lags quantity. Dropout rates remain concerning at higher levels of education (11.5% at secondary), and retention stands at 62.9% in secondary education (Mehta, 2025a). Related discussions on educationforallinindia.com underscore institutional leadership gaps, such as at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), which could bolster planning for social sciences if revitalised (Mehta, 2025c).

Data Tables: Enrollment and Efficiency Indicators

To illustrate the contrast between access gains and quality challenges, the following tables summarise key data from verified sources.

The Counter-Narrative: Expanding Access

School and higher-education enrolment data tell a different story of progress that indirectly bolsters the social sciences by widening the student base. However,  the journey in higher education enrolment over the past decade tells a story of steady expansion coupled with a quiet revolution in gender equity.

In 2014–15, just under one in four young Indians aged 18–23 (23.7%) were enrolled in college or university. Men had a clear edge, with a gross enrolment ratio of 25.3% compared to 23.2% for women – a gap of more than two percentage points that reflected long-standing social preferences for educating sons over daughters.

By 2021–22 (latest year), the picture had changed dramatically. The overall GER climbed to 28.4%, adding nearly five million more students to the higher education system in just seven years. More strikingly, women almost caught up: female enrolment rose to 28.3% while male enrolment reached 28.5%. The gender gap, once a stubborn feature of Indian education statistics, had shrunk to a negligible 0.2 percentage points. In less than a decade, India achieved something that many countries take generations to accomplish: near-perfect gender parity in access to higher education.

Provisional estimates suggest that by 2024–25 the national GER will cross the 30% mark for the first time. While that milestone is worth celebrating, it also serves as a reminder of the distance still to travel. At 30%, seven out of ten young Indians in the relevant age group remain outside the higher education system – a figure that pales in comparison with the global average of around 40% and the 60–80% common in most developed nations.

The sharp rise in female enrolment stands out as the brightest spot in this decade-long story. Targeted policies – from scholarship programmes and hostel facilities for girls to campaigns like Beti Bachao Beti Padhao – have clearly paid off. Women are no longer playing catch-up; in many states they now out-enrol men.

In short, between 2014 and 2025 India has managed both to widen the gates of higher education and to ensure that daughters walk through them just as often as sons. The next chapter, however, will demand far greater ambition if the country is to reach the National Education Policy’s goal of 50% enrolment by 2035.

Table 1: Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in Higher Education (Age 18–23), All India
Year Total GER Male GER Female GER Source
2014-15 23.7 % 25.3 % 23.2 % AISHE Reports, Ministry of Education
2021-22 28.4 % 28.5 % 28.3 %
2024-25 (est.) ~30 % — —
Table 2: Key School Education Indicators – UDISE+ 2024-25 (All India)
Indicator Primary
(I–V)		 Upper Primary
(VI–VIII)		 Secondary
(IX–X)		 Higher Secondary
(XI–XII)
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) 90.9% 90.3 % 78.7% 58.4 %
Annual Average Dropout Rate 1.3 % 3.5 % 11.5 % —
Retention Rate at Primary 924 % 82.8% 62.9% 47.2%
Transition Rate to Next Level — 92.3 % (from Primary) 86.6 % (from upper primary) 75.1 % (from secondary)
Source: UDISE+ 2024-25 Report, Ministry of Education (released December 2025) & analysis by Prof. Arun C. Mehta

The UDISE+ 2024–25 data reveal a familiar yet sharpening pattern in the school education system in India: near-universal access at the elementary stage giving way to rapid attrition as students climb the educational ladder [Mehta, 2025 & Ministry of Education, 2025].

At the primary level (Classes I–V), Gross Enrolment Ratio stands at an impressive 90.9%, supported by a low annual dropout rate of 1.3% (down from 1.9% in 2023–24) and a retention rate of 92.4% [Mehta, 2025 & MoE, 2025]. Transition from primary to upper primary remains strong at 92.3%, enabling the upper primary GER to hold steady at 90.3% [Mehta, 2025]. These figures reflect the sustained impact of flagship programmes such as Samagra Shiksha, midday meals, and infrastructure expansion under the earlier RTE framework [NEP, 2020].

The system, however, begins to leak significantly from the secondary stage onward. Secondary GER (Classes IX–X) is 78.7%, with the annual average dropout rate surging to 11.5% – a marked improvement from 16.4% two years earlier but still translating into over 4.2 million students leaving school each year [Mehta 2025 & PIB, 2024-25]. Retention at the secondary level drops to 62.9%, and only 75.1% of secondary completers transition to higher secondary [Mehta, 2025]. By Classes XI–XII, GER falls to 58.4% and retention collapses to 47.2%, confirming the persistence of a pronounced “funnel effect” that has characterised Indian school education for decades [MoE, 2025 & Govinda & Mathew, 2024].

Gender disaggregated trends  continue to favour girls at most levels, particularly in retention and transition, with the Gender Parity Index now exceeding 1.0 in many states for secondary and higher secondary enrolment [UDISE+ 2024-25, ASER, 2025]; this reinforces the pattern first observed in higher education: policy interventions and changing social norms have decisively reversed historical male advantage in educational participation.

In sum, while India has largely solved the problem of access at the elementary stage, the challenge of retention and equitable progression beyond Class VIII remains acute. Achieving NEP 2020’s target of 100% GER at all levels by 2030 will require far more aggressive financial incentives, vocational integration, teacher redeployment to secondary schools, and targeted support for socially disadvantaged groups – especially rural adolescents and first-generation learners [NEP, 2020 & UIS, 2025].

Concluding Observations

The decline in social sciences, as articulated by Podh, is not isolated but symptomatic of broader inequities in India’s education system. While enrollment expansions signal progress toward universal access, neglecting research funding, faculty stability, and institutional support risks turning universities into degree mills rather than idea incubators. To reverse this, policymakers must prioritise filling vacancies, boosting ICSSR budgets, and operationalising the mechanisms of NEP 2020, such as the National Research Foundation. Without these, the  aspiration for a “Viksit Bharat” by 2047 could falter, as social sciences provide the critical lens for addressing inequality, governance, and societal change. Ultimately, revitalising this field demands viewing education not as an expense but as an investment in democratic resilience.

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