Diversity and Equity in Higher Education: A Study in India

Introduction

While the expansion of higher education is primarily driven by economic agenda, the equity concerns are driven by social agendas like social justice. State policies play important role in promoting equity in access to higher education. Equal inputs need not always lead to equal outcomes in education (Varghese et al, 2018). Various social, economic, political, geographical and other developments in a society lead to both positive and negative discrimination. The expansion of the higher education sector in India is phenomenal. With more than 900 universities, nearly 40,000 colleges, 1.4 million teachers and 35 million students, India has the second largest higher education system in the world . The enrolment ratio in higher education improves steadily and quickly during the century. The Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) increased from 8.9 in 2002 to 25.8 in 2018 (Government of India, 2019). The country entered a stage of massification of higher education; a major share of the expansion was accounted for by private institutions. The revival and expansion of the higher education sector in this century has mainly relied on private institutions and household funding (Varghese et al, 2018). The expansion of higher education in India has been found to be accompanied by persisting disparities- regional disparities, social group disparities and gender disparities (Jana and Maiti 2018, Jana and Maiti 2019).