GDP spend on education remains stagnant

New Delhi, Jan 5 (UNI) Despite the Centre making efforts to promote higher education in the country, the GDP spend on it remained stagnant at 0.37 per cent in the last two years as against 0.50 per cent, 1.07 per cent and 1.41 per cent in China, the UK and the US.

Not only is this small but its allocation is skewed, industry chamber Assocham today said in a paper on 'Future of Indian Higher Education'.

''One-fourth of the total government funding goes to about 130 out of 1,80,000 institutions in the country. Other institutions have either no government funding or have much lower level of funding per institution and per student than the privileged few central institutions,'' it said.

The total central plan allocation on education has been raised by 31.52 per cent from Rs 18,336 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 24,115 crore in the current financial budget (2006-07).

Secondary and higher education attracted an expenditure of just Rs 6,982 crore, 29 per cent of the total expenditure on education.

The chamber, in the paper, recommended doubling of the resource allocation for higher education from current levels of 0.37 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) to 0.73 per cent to facilitate access of children to higher education.

There is also a need for a better linkage between quality and excellence if access and quality are to be balanced, Assocham said. ''Only nine universities, 100 colleges and 500 departments out of 350 universities and 17,750 colleges, have a potential for excellence. It is not only an insignificant representation of the repositories of excellence, but also poorly reflects on the extant quality control mechanism.'' UNI