Economic Reforms and the Weak-Link in the Changing Financing Strategy of Higher Education in India

Augmentation of resources is encouraged either by covering a large share of cost of higher education or through foll cost recovery from students even in public higher educational institutions in India. Further, the new student loan programme introduced in 2001, is insensitive to the needs of the weaker sections. Hence, an alternative loan programme must be evolved and flexible enough to suit their requirements. A comprehensive student support system must be in place when fees are raised. But what is observed is that the number of scholarship schemes and amount of resources allocated to scholarships has been declined. This clearly brings out the weak link in the changing financing strategy of higher education. Hence, the paper argues for an alternative loan scheme to encourage equal access and participation of the weaker sections. Considering the higher cost of administration of such a loan programme than the actual amount of loans recovered from poor students, means-tested free ships and scholarships are recommended to be in place.