Impact of Public Education Expenditure Across Different Levels on Higher Education Access in India: A Panel Data Study

Abstract

India is a country with the highest youth population in the world. Therefore, the future of India and its higher education highly depends on how India will design its higher education access policies and its approach towards financing the same. This chapter analyses the impact of educational finance on higher education access in India by using fixed-effect models. This chapter shows that there is a negative relation between the public spending on elementary education and higher education access, but spending on secondary and higher education positively influences the college access. It is also found that there is a negative relationship between per-student expenditure on higher education and the higher education access. This relation is more intensely negative for high-income states of India. This is mainly due to the increasing privatization in higher education sector to cater to the rising demand of the higher education, on the one hand, and gradual withdrawal of public funding from higher education, on the other. Next important result is the weak impact of educational finance on college access of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes in comparison to cumulative and female enrolments. This chapter further shows that the increase in economic growth highly enhances the overall college access, but not in the case of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Finally, statistically insignificant relation has been detected between spending on scholarships and higher education access.