The latest survey findings on higher education in India presents a fact sheet on status of college and university education in all states. Evaluation of employability and research abilities of students pursuing and completing higher education can add value to survey data. The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-2021 released by the Ministry of Education highlights significant progress made in enrolment, appointment of teachers, expansion of technical and professional education. Disaggregated data will be a useful reference to plan allocations in education sector by the States for their annual budget for 2023-24. The survey data also indicate the challenges ahead for the States as they focus on quality of education in colleges and universities under the National Education Policy 2020. Among the key findings of AISHE-2020-21 are: the total enrolment in higher education has increased to nearly 4.14 crore in 2020-21 from 3.85 crore in 2019-20, female enrolment has increased to 2.01 crore from 1.88 crore, the percentage of female enrolment to total enrolment has increased from 45% in 2014-15 to around 49% in 2020-21 and the female enrolment in North-eastern States is 6.14 lakh in 2020-21, higher than the male enrolment of 5.92 lakh which implies that for every 100 male students in the region in higher education, there are 104 female students. Across the country, the percentage of female enrolment to total enrolment has increased from 45% in 2014-15 to around 49% in 2020-21, which is note worthy progress made in improving access of higher education for girls. However, high drop out rate of girls at secondary level, estimated at 15%, tells the other part of the story of a significant number of girls not being able to continue before reaching the stage for qualifying for higher education in academic or professional courses. Addressing problems of early marriage and gender discrimination at household level is crucial for bringing down dropout rates at secondary level. Some of the major problems currently faced by the higher education system in India flagged in NEP 2020 are : a severely fragmented higher educational ecosystem; less emphasis on the development of cognitive skills and learning outcomes; a rigid separation of disciplines, with early specialization and streaming of students into narrow areas of study; limited access particularly in socio-economically disadvantaged areas, with few higher educational institution that teach in local languages and inadequate mechanisms for merit-based career management and progression of faculty and institutional leaders. The survey has brought to light that enrolment in professional courses is more in private institutions than in government both at Under Graduate (UG) and Post Graduate (PG) levels and the share of enrolment in professional courses is higher at PG level than at UG level. This point towards growing demand for professionals in the county but public-funded institutions have not been able to cater to it. The NEP envisages that stand-alone agricultural universities, legal universities, health science universities, technical universities, and stand-alone institutions in other fields, shall aim to become multidisciplinary institutions offering holistic and multidisciplinary education. The policy also underscores the need for India taking the lead in preparing professionals in cutting-edge areas that are fast gaining prominence, such as artificial intelligence, 3-D machining, big data analysis, and machine learning, in addition to genomic studies, biotechnology, nanotechnology, neuroscience, with important applications to health, environment, and sustainable living for enhancing employability of the youth. Public-funded colleges and universities offering these disciplines is critical to ensure that talent pool among students belonging to socially and economically disadvantaged families can be tapped by ensuring that they get same quality of education as those from economically better off households who can afford such professional courses in private institutions. More polytechnics are needed for North-eastern states in which employment is a burning problem that triggers large-scale outmigration of lakhs of youth who dropout at secondary or higher education levels to pick up jobs of unskilled workers. The AISHE report shows that there are 13.9 lakh students enrolled in Polytechnics and nine States having a total of 11.28 lakh students in Polytechnics account for 81.03% of the total students enrolled in polytechnics and no state from the Northeast figures in the list of these top states. Survey data also highlights of 81% of polytechnic students in the country are male students and the remaining 19% are females. Increasing enrolment of females in polytechnics is essential to end the gender disparity but also increasing gainful employability of females. India's paradox of demographic dividend and unemployability is explained by colleges and universities producing graduates and postgraduates without employability and research capabilities which is colossal waste of human resource potential. Reversing the trend will require the central as well as state governments to significantly increase budgetary allocation in infrastructure, teachers' recruitment and research activities for improving quality in higher education.