Should India Follow the Global CSR Trend of Financing Tertiary Education?

Abstract

Abstract Purpose - The purpose of the paper is to analyse the need of corporate sectors to spend in tertiary education sector of India under mandatory CSR spending. Design – Database of RBI and Census helps in establishing link between education and economic growth. Data from UGC report, AICTE report are used to show the demand and supply of higher education. Wheebox and NASSCOM report are used to show employability ratio of Indian youths. CSR funding can play more important role towards increasing employability of educated mass in India than directly spending in education. Findings – The result show that there exist no significant correlation between education and economic growth using education expenditure but some amount of correlation between number of literates and GDP. There is excess supply of seats in general, technical and management seats all over India compared to demand. Research limitations – Data on CSR spending by Indian companies are not readily available for facilitating research activity. It’s only been a year since CSR has been made mandatory, so companies are yet to decide their choice of area. Practical implications – Since profitable companies are bound to spend 2% of their three year average net profit on CSR, this paper add to our knowledge that companies should take initiative to reduce educated unemployment by focusing on training and skill development. Originality – This study points out the scarcity of updated training institutions to harness the skills of educated youth which can be met by CSR. Keywords – CSR, Tertiary Education, Training and Skill Development