Privatization of Higher Education: A Study on Students’ Perspective

Abstract

Education is globally considered as an important investment in building human capital. Human capital is the means of all technical innovation and economic growth. Providing education to all is considered as primary duty of the government. But the government has diverted its focus from higher education to primary education and welcomed private sector to enter the higher education sector, which is termed as privatization of higher education. There is a wave of privatization of education in our country. The need of higher education system has been increasing rapidly in India. The government of India realized that public budgets cannot adequately fund higher education need of vast population. So, the government has taken measures such as, hike in student fees, student loans and privatization; in justification of availability and mobilization of resources to expand higher education. These measures have made higher education a lucrative business for industrialists. A large number of private institutions are encouraged to enter in education sector. On the one hand privatization of higher education made education assessable to the masses; on the other hand it brings fee hike, poor quality, exploitation of professionals etc. There are views for and against privatization of higher education in India. Though some have been criticizing the concept even before it has come to be defined and taken off the ground, others consider it very useful and need of the hour. As students are the most important stakeholders of education system. The present study is an attempt to analyse the attitude of college students towards privatization of higher education.