Financing of State Universities in India: A Case Study

Abstract

The fiscal crisis facing the economy has led to withdrawal of the state from major sectors of the economy including education. With the advent of the liberalized economic policy the private sector has been playing a pivotal role in the economic development. Higher education ceases to be the ‘merit good’ and the universities are encouraged to mobilize resources by their own efforts rather than depending on government grants. This has impacted the financing of state and central universities across India. Actually, this paper evaluates the funding of state universities in India through a case study, taking into consideration the changing contours of financing higher education. The core idea of the study is to analyse the resource mobilization as well as its utilization by the selected university. The study is based on secondary data. The discussion on the funding pattern reveals that the university is highly dependent on state grants for their day-to-day functioning. Though the efforts to generate internal resources is picking up, the university has failed to address the long run financial crunch of the university. The study concludes that unless the universities explore alternative channels of resources mobilization, it would be difficult to offer quality education in this era of globalization.

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