Economic Reforms and Inclusive Growth of Higher Education in India

By : A. Abdul Salim

Page No: 309-313

Abstract
The importance of education in socio-economic development has been well-recognized with the ‘human investment revolution in economic thought’ since the 1960s. This has resulted in the substantial public investment flowing in to education and spectacular growth in enrolment both at the levels of school and higher education in both developing and developed countries of the world. But when the term economic crisis was unveiled with the oil shocks, world inflation, mounting foreign debt and world recession, countries began introducing Economic Reforms through various stabilization and adjustment policies. These policies have a lot of indirect and adverse effects on education and human development. The policy-makers in our country do not seem to realize the mutually reinforcing relationship between education and economic development; rather they go in for recommending public expenditure cuts in education particularly higher education. Even when our economy was growing 6 percent to 8 percent per annum, there was no significant increase in the allocation of government resources to higher education. Instead, the government aims to realise the promised expansion of higher education with the active involvement of the private sector and through various modes of public–private partnership. This has serious adverse effects on access and equity of various socioeconomic groups in higher education. In India, there exists wide disparities in educational attainment among regions and states, between males and females, poor and non-poor, religious categories, castes and occupational groups. Inclusive growth by reducing these disparities calls for increased allocation of government resources as has been done in the case of Asian Miracle Countries; not by withdrawing from the higher education sector by offering a few subsidies. In this context, this paper attempts to discuss the economic reforms and inclusive growth of higher education in India, in the light of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan recommendations.

Author :
A. Abdul Salim : Associate Professor at Department of Economics. University of Kerala, Kariavattom Campus, Thiruvananthapuram— 695581, Kerala.