Higher Education Subsidies for Low Income Families An Impact of Fee Reimbursement Scheme in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Higher Education is one of the important aspects of the Indian Educational Policy in which subsidies in higher education are playing a vital role for the past few years in India.While national policies on education and particularly higher education emphasized an enhanced access, the actual enrollments are not supporting translation of policy into practice. Data across the country indicates that a large number of aspirants are out of the system of higher education. Policies are most rhetorically underscoring the need for more policy support. The policy changes that were brought in after the introduction of neoliberal policies pushed higher education into non-merit category disqualifying the sector of much needed government subsidies. In this political context, former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, the late Y. S Rajashekar Reddy gave a shape to a policy called fee reimbursement scheme for low income families to pursue higher education in corporate colleges. However the scheme is introduced in 2008 with an innovative idea of ‘saturation.' It is referred to an instrumentality by which all those who approached are selected for pursuing higher education subject to certain conditions. These include total fee reimbursement to all initially (2008-12). The targeted beneficiaries include those belonging to scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, and other backward castes (also referred to as backward classes) and also those who are economically backward (subject to income ceiling). As many as 24 Government orders are issued administrating the system in 10600 institutions as of 2012-13. Indeed, it is a massive scheme which covers both government and privately funded institutions. The total number of government institutions are 1600, the remaining are private 9500. It is a policy according to many purportedly supported privatization.  However, this articleis mainly focuses on the impact of fee reimbursement policy on higher education in providing access to higher education for low-income families in Andhra Pradesh in order to enhance the gross enrollment ratio as well as empower the socially, educationally and economically backward communities.