Financing of University Education in India: An Analysis

Economic literature conclusively establishes that the countries which invested heavily in education (and higher education) realized higher growth rates than those which neglected it. It has, therefore, become imperative for the developing countries like India, to give due importance to both quantitative and qualitative expansion of this sector. The expansion and growth of the university and higher education sector depends crucially, if not entirely, on the input of financial resources into the system. It is, therefore, important to analyze the flows of financial resources made into this sector. Thus, accordingly, the study makes an analysis of the trends in public expenditure on education sector (and its sub-sectors) over a fairly long period of almost a quarter of a century and that too taking into consideration the inter-state and inter-regional picture. Further, this book also studies the budgets of the several universities in the country by taking a huge sample of 25 per cent of the universities. Also keeping in view the fact that no such systematic study with national level and region-wise coverage is available, the study also tends to fill this gap in literature.