Explain the role of govt in financing higher education
Answers
In India, the responsibility of financing higher education is shared by both publicand private sectors. Public sector includes central government and stategovernments (Ahir and Joshi, 2013). The central government spending is inclinedmore towards central universities. Even if the trend is always upwards, the total public expenditure on higher education at about 1.25 per cent of the GDP , is byany standards certainly insufficient (UGC, 2012). The private expenditure onhigher education has increased about 12.8 times during last one decade (Ahir andJoshi, 2013)
The mode of funding higher education in the public sector is central to highereducation policymaking because it reflects how education is provided to societyand what price (Chattopadhyay, 2007: 4251). The Government has plannedexpenditure of INR 1,107 billion on higher education during the Twelfth FiveYear plan (2012-2017), 1.3 times higher than the planned expenditure in Eleventh plan (FICCI, 2012, p. 15). The given bar graph shows the expenditure on highereducation in India from 2006 to 2011 as percentage of GDP:
It is vivid from the above bar graph that the public expenditure in highereducation is just above1% of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) overthe years. It seems quite low in proportion to the growing requirements of thissector. As a result, private sector institutions have been growing rapidly.
The public expenditure in education sector, especially in higher education hasremained very low over the years, only a little over 1% of the GDP. The National Education Policy 1968 and 1986 (revised in 1992) recommendsgovernment expenditure on education at 6% of GDP, whereas the 2010-11(BE) expenditure was only at 3.8%. Realizing the need to provide a goodquality higher education to the growing young population of the country, the11th Five Year Plan saw a 4.6 fold increase in allocation over the 10th FiveYear Plan. This constituted 19.4% of the overall central plan allocation. Tocontinue the trend, the 12th Five Year Plan proposes an outlay of Rs.1,10,700crore for higher education, an increase of 30% over the 11th Five Year Plan.However, given the burgeoning requirements of this sector, the governmentfunding alone may not be sufficient and significant involvement would berequired of the private sector as well. (ASHE, 2013,)
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