The State of India's Elementary and Higher Education

India has seen a spurt of private institution in the last decade owing to the neoliberal policies adopted by the government. The thrust of this paper lies in exploring how the higher education sector of the country is influenced by this mass scale privatization. My paper would argue that in the light of the Chilean mass protests against the privatization of education, it is important to take into account the views and beliefs of the students who are the major beneficiaries of any educational reform. My paper will also argue how privatization leads to social exclusion and also increased immiseration of the ones who avail it. The need for strengthening community schools would be argued so as to strengthen the knowledge base of the ones entering the higher education scenario. Education is one of the indispensable endowments that is supposed to be distributed amongst everyone in a country without any discrimination on the basis of religion, caste or creed. The state has the foremost responsibility of ensuring the equal redistribution of education amongst all its citizens. As such the government with its policies and implementation of pro people laws can ensure affordable education for all its citizens. There is also a need of the government to prioritize spending on education. For instance, according to World Bank India spends only 3.3% of its total GDP for funding and improving infrastructure in educational institutions both in the primary and higher educational sectors. Further the growth of private sector also tends to act as a support (financially and logistically) to help the problem of underfunding in the public institutions. It is important to evaluate India's spending capacity on higher education reforms as an analysis of the actual mix of public subsidies and non-government finances for education in a society I believe reflects the economic policies of the government, the traditions, and social policies of the given society. Talking about redistribution of education, it is to be noted that here the public nature of education is highlighted. In India, according to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), 2014-15 access of more than 80% of our total population to higher education remains restricted. This 80% also includes Dalit and tribal children who have been historically denied the opportunity of not only pursuing higher education but also primary education. With the increasing demands of a growing middle class and also as India drifts towards a more neoliberal form of governance and economy, it is seen that privatization has increased by heaps and bounds. This was seen after India adopted the LPG policies under which India opened up her economy which led to the erosion of the hold of the state over the entire education sector. Even though a lot of scholars supporting privatization argue that the existence of private institutions alongside the public institution enhances the performance of the latter. This I would argue is not a time tested argument as the ALSHE comparison of higher education (Graduation and Post graduation among public and private universities in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal) tells us that private educational institutions do not contribute to employability of the children graduating from private institutions. Further the crisis of Privatization deepens as we see an economy of debt developing in the country. As more and more students are interested in pursuing professional courses from private institutions; they find it difficult to complete their education. Parents are forced to

2018

2021

This is an open access article & it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) Privatization is considered a process which is defined as the transfer of shares or assets, management, responsibilities from the public to private sector. Today it becomes a major issue in Education system. The present paper traces supportive decisions taken by India Government favouring privatization of Education. It also seeks to analyse the present condition of higher education with special reference to privatization of education in India. The paper follows analytical description as methodology through secondary data. It points out the emergence of private sector in higher education. Positive and negative impact of privatization on education & society are also identified.

This paper aims to analyse the impact of privatisation of education in the Indian society. The government of India introduced new economic policies namely globalisation, privatisation and liberalisation to increase employment, output and income opportunities and achieve economic development at international level. Privatisation has brought about rapid change in the educational scenario of India. It is seen that privatisation encourages the individuals and religious organisations to establish colleges and deemed universities to meet the growing demand for higher education. Consequently, higher educational institutions are found throughout the country. It not only increases the number of higher educational institutions but also increases the number of seats for highly demand courses such as engineering and medicine. Moreover, it decreases the distance between the educational institutions. It causes competition among them to fill the seats allotted by the affiliated universities and maximize socioeconomic benefits. However, it creates the gap between the demand and supply of higher education. It not only increases the cost but also decreases the quality of education. Thus, privatisation has positive and negative impact on education and society. Hence, the present study is an attempt to analyse the impact of privatisation on the growth and demand and supply of higher education and on society at micro level. Introduction Education is the most important and powerful tool invented by mankind to shape and mould himself for personal as well as social life. In short, it prepares the man for life. Moreover, it is the important source of employment, income and standard of living. So, everyone gives important to higher education. As a result, it has become one of the basic necessities of human life in the materialistic and knowledge society. Hence, the demand for higher education has increased especially after the independence of India. But the central and the state governments are unable to meet the increasing the demand for higher education due to financial constraints, non-availability of appropriate places and cost of higher education. Therefore, it encourages the individuals and organisation to establish colleges and deemed universities. As a result, the number of self-financed arts and science, engineering and medical colleges has increased on the one hand and increased the gap between the demand and supply of higher education. This is also because the afflicted colleges have applied for additional seats to meet the demand for certain courses. Thus, the increase in the number of colleges and demand for additional seats create a gap between the demand and supply of higher education in many higher educational institutions in India. Further, privatisation has positive and negative impact on higher education and society.

Trends in Bildung International, 2006

The debate in India about the Right to Education Bill 2005 is an example for the basic question in education reform: Is education to be provided by the state or by private actors? With this bill the Government of India (GoI) suggests it's programme to implement the "right to education", which has become the 86 th amendment to the constitution in 2002. It guarantees free and compulsory education for all children in the age of 6-14. There is a rapid increase in private initiative in order to fill insufficient government provision of quality education. But is the state enforcing privatisation of education? The debate about the Right to Education Bill shows an ambivalent attitude of the GoI towards private schools: They are seen as a means to achieve Education for All through a reservation policy for children from low socioeconomic strata on the one hand and tries to control them more in order to decrease the number of unrecognised schools. Critics of the current education policy accuse the GoI of a lack of strength to create a common school system, in their view the only way to make the constitutional right a reality. On this backdrop the article discusses statements in favour and against an increasing role of private actors in education and concludes that the noble idea of a right to education as amended to the constitution can not be fulfilled if the state does not take its primary responsibility for the provision of quality education to every child serious.

Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia, 2021

India has had a long history of a larger institutionalized school system of more than 150 years, starting from the colonial times to the present. This system has not only been influenced by its colonial history but also been shaped by different sets of political, economic, and social changes ever since Independence. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the above trajectory with a more detailed focus on the changes that have taken place in the school system over the last three decades. These decades have seen unprecedented expansion of the school system; emergence of newer complexities in the reshaping of relations between the state, market, and non-state actors in education and also a sharpening of tensions between values of social justice and equity; and a rights-based mandate of education as a public good on the one hand and market-based reforms on the other. The chapter outlines the nature of these changes and the continuing challenges faced by the school education system within a framework of the constitutional provisions and the policy mandates that have been the guiding blocks for educational reform agendas.

CGHE Working Paper , 2024

Higher Education is a complex reality embedded in the diverse and layered social structure constituted by the interplay among the economy, society, culture, polity and geography at a particular historical juncture. This Working Paper seeks to understand the salience of human capital in the functioning of a Higher Education Institution and the economic rationale behind higher education policy making. The theoretical perspective adopted is located within the sub-discipline of Economics, referred to as Economics of Education. This paper consists of three parts. In Part A, the paper seeks to analyse critically the concept of human capital and human capital theory and traces out the implications for the higher education sector. In part B, the paper seeks to examine critically the economic rationale that informs higher education reform by focusing on two concepts of efficiency, technical at the institutional and allocational or exchange at the system level. We argue that the concept of human capital remains useful to explain why public and private funded institutions have failed to deliver quality education in the context of India. In Part C, we make an attempt to unravel the rationale behind Indian higher education reform as mooted in the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP). This paper argues why the ongoing higher education reform in India based on the NEP may not yield the desired results as the ground reality that exists in Indian higher education defies the underlying assumptions of the policy makers.

For the last few years, one can easily notice the powerful grip which the private sectors hold in the educational sector. It's highly a debate issue whether it serves good or bad purpose. It seems to be highly pragmatic if they take over the educational sector with philanthropic mission and vision. But looking at pathetic situation prevailing in the field of higher education, one can hardly favour the role played by private sectors here. Obviously its only motive is to turn colleges into money making factories. Those who run private colleges have no vision whatsoever. They are modern Arjunas whose eyes are focused on profit only. They have no hesitation in making compromise with quality. It is high time for the society to raise voice against such elements in the interest of poor students. The present research paper aims at alarming those who have considered education `anyone's business'

Economic and Political Weekly, 2014

Privatisation of tertiary education in liberalising India has taken place in the presence of a centralised regulatory regime. This phenomenon does not conform to explanations that understand privatisation as a direct consequence of withdrawal of the state from higher education and challenges the idea that liberalisation has minimal impact on state funding of higher education. This article seeks to understand the phenomenon through a comparative analysis of the tertiary education sector in pre- and post-liberalisation Karnataka which turned into a site of patronage and social management. Privatisation became the means by which the regulatory state placated powerful local groups which stood to lose from the reform process.

European Scientific Journal, 2014

Socialism in India emerged during the 20 th Century as part of the Independence movement and gained strong hold as it espoused the causes of the under privilege section of the society. It influenced the principle economic and social policies of the Indian government after independence until the 1990's when India took a step towards a neo-liberal economy. The hegemony of neo liberal ideology as reflected in the adoption of free trade, market economy, privatization and predominance of corporate culture that actually calls for progressive decrease of state involvement in the governance, finance and administration of the higher education system in India hijacked the idea of a welfare state. This led India to gradually drift away from socialism to capitalism. This paper outlines the impact of neo-liberal capitalism on Education. It examines neoliberalism as coerced concepts of corporatization and commercialization of higher education in India. It highlights that neoliberalism would polarised the society.