Artha Vijnana: Journal of The Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics

P. Geetha Rani ¹

Affiliations
1 Department of Education Finance, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi 110016, IN

Abstract

The present paper estimates the extent of disparity in earnings across location, caste, religious and English language ability groups. Using IHDS-2005 data, gross private returns to education are estimated by applying Heckman selection model. Results confirm that returns to education increase with level of education across various groups. Both gross (and net) returns to elementary education are low across different groups, indicating low quality of basic schooling. Returns to higher education vary ranging from -29.10 per cent (-26.9 per cent net returns) among the Dalit-Adivasi workers with the highest returns of 38.2 per cent (34.08 per cent net returns) among fluent English ability group. This is in contrast to Duraisamy (2002) reporting the highest returns to secondary education between 1983 and 1993-1994. In a decade's time, with transformations in the economy and in labour market, higher education especially with English language ability brings in highest returns. Discrimination of caste and minorities influencing earnings is dominant in urban than in rural areas.

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P. Geetha Rani ¹

Affiliations
1 National University of Educational Planning and Administration, 17-B, Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi 110016, IN

Abstract

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.

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P. Geetha Rani ¹

Affiliations
1 National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, IN

Abstract

Disaggregated Human Development Index would reveal a more detailed profile of human development as the overall index of a country or a state can conceal the fact that different regions within the country/state have very different levels of human development. The objective of this paper is to present human development profile of the districts of India, obtaining the district level data from Census (1991), Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (1993) and Irudhaya Rajan and Mohanachandran (1998).

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