EDUCATION continues to be the flavour of the season, even in the current budget. The Finance Minister, taking note of the fact that over 784 million Indians fall in the 15-59 age group,  acknowledged that continuous education plays a very crucial role, in ensuring that they are employable. Hence the budget too, has raised allocation to higher education by 24% over the current year and the proposal stands at Rs. 82,000 crore, of which 21912 crores was allocated to higher education.

This is about 4.6% of the total budget expenses, but is just about 2.7% of nation’s GDP. While the absolute allocation is large, in comparison with the developed world, India still has a long way to go. Most of the OECD nations spend in the region of 4.5% to 6.5% of their GDP in education.

Thus one can see that the allocation is skewed toward primary education rather than technical and higher education. While one cannot dispute the need for universalising primary education, demographic dividend can only be achieved if the allocation for higher and technical education is raised substantially, that too on an urgent basis.

While the allocation for higher education stands at about 10,000 crores, divide that amongst the 100-odd institutions that central government supports, it translates in to a paltry 100 crores each, which pales in comparison to global standards.

Technical education fares much worse. Of the 6332 crores allocated, a lion’s share goes to the IITs and with five new IITs, even they do not receive adequate money required to maintain their academic and research capabilities, let alone compete with global universities. To put it in perspective, the annual budget of Nanyung technological University, at about 4,000 crores is about 60% of our total technical education budget. Collectively the higher education system could only accommodate about 11% of the eligible participants, explaining the mismatched priorities of the present government.

The biggest concern is investment in skill building. Over 90% of eligible youth who pass out from the secondary education system do not move on to higher education system. Add up those who out of  school itself, the number of youth who urgently need skills training assumes mind-boggling proportions. But the budget allocates just about 500 crores for National Skills Development Mission. Formed with much fanfare a year back, the National Skills Development Corporation is mandated to train over 1 crore youth in the coming decade. At the end of the first year, all its operational training initiatives have succeeded in training not more than 20,000 individuals, a far cry from the target. Unless the initiative scales up dramatically, training such numbers will remain a pipe dream. In sum, budget leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to allocations for higher education system.