Indian Higher Education

If physical capital — its growth and distribution — was central to debate on economic development in the twentieth century, human capital increasingly occupies centre stage in the twenty-first century (Kapur and Crowley, 2008), and this puts a spotlight on education — whether primary, secondary or tertiary. The very promise of higher education for developing countries is also making this a politically contentious issue. Universities are political because they influence the minds of young adults. And they are becoming even more so because of the growing awareness of the distributional implications of higher education. As private provision and international education grow, issues of equity and access become even more salient. Many of the underlying handicaps faced by students from lower socio-economic groups appear to occur much earlier in the life cycle — at the primary and secondary school levels — but policies to overcome them are pressed only in higher education, often too little and too late. Unsurprisingly the attention devoted to higher education in developing countries has focused mainly on its economic effects, especially its links to labour markets. However, there is little understanding about the way in which its impact is mediated by the type of education and its beneficiaries.