Budgeting Higher Education: Recalibrating India’s Intellectual Landscape

With the 2024-25 expenditure budget, the Finance Minister calibrated India’s vision towards Vikshit Bharat. India's aspiration to become Vishvaguru with a philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam – The World is One Family is a unique proposition towards Viksit Bharat by 2047. The idea of Vishvaguru embodied in educational philosophy shares a common humanistic bond worldwide. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, education is to build the power of humankind and spirit. It is the evoking of knowledge, character, and culture. It extends the universal education landscape; as Paulo Freire acknowledges, one cannot expect positive results from an education that fails to respect the people's particular view of the world.  While budgeting higher education vision, a crucial question that naturally arises in response to such prescriptions is, “How can a nation and its members adopt such character? The answer lies in the government's attempts to transform its national character in the process of becoming a developed country -Viksit Bharat.

What distinguishes India’s philosophical foundation of education is not skills that have the potential to convert the mind into money.

Education requires a distinctive ability of knowledge to “produce, acquire, conserve, and dispense”- 385 Kural, Thiruvalluvar. By demonstrating this, India can fill the void for several countries’ agendas regarding UN SDG 4 on quality education, i.e., “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life learning opportunities for all” by 2030. Undoubtedly, India is strategically situated in a global education agenda with a median age of 28 to harness demographic advantage by nurturing education through learning empiricism and critical thinking.

Post-Independence 1948, India’s education policy attempts have been aligned to promote higher education. Starting from the Radhakrishnan Committee, followed by the Kothari Commission (1966), the Education Policy 1986, the National Policy of Education 1992, the Yah Pal Committee 2009, and the New Education Policy 2020. These visions are often marred by resource scarcity. Thus, the financial health of universities remains a critical concern in India. As per the AISHE 2021-22 report, the total investment in higher education has increased to nearly 4.33 crore in FY22 (an increase of 26.5 percent since FY15. However, with approximately 4.33 crore in higher education and more than 11 crore learners in skilling institutions, there is a need to improve overall quality across 1,168 universities, 45,473 colleges, and 12,002 standalone institutions with 15.98 lakh teachers in higher education. To cope with this constantly evolving knowledge paradigm, the financial health of higher education institutions has become more competitive in the last decade due to a rapidly shifting paradigm. The shift is geared due to a reduced life-cycle of scientific knowledge that has doubled every ten years, making the constant supply of resources to innovate more challenging. This has drastically shifted the role of governance to constantly improve the financial health of higher education ingrained in innovation.

Budget support across G20 countries, according to the World Bank country's government expenditure on education total GDP between 2019-2022 r, reflects the need for higher priority on education. While the world average varies between 3.7 and 4.4, data suggest few countries have constantly improved their budgetary support between 2019 and 2022. Australia's expenditure dwells between 5.1 to 5.7; Argentina's 4.6-5.3; Brazin's 5.8 to 6, Canada's 4.1 to 4.9, China's 3.3 to 3.6, France's 5.2 to 5.7, 4.5 to 5.6, Indonesia 2.4 to 3.5, Italy 4.0 to 4.4,  Japan 3.2 to 3.5, Russia 3.5 to 3.7, the United Kingdom 5.2 to 5.4 and the United States of America 5.0 to 5.6. While India’s increase in government expenditure of more than 3.9 to 4.6 is a move towards a global pattern, unleashing demographic dividend by establishing a knowledge hub requires multiple-fold increases.

The current India's expenditure budget of 24-25 on education has twofold priorities: education in sectors other than the Ministry of Education and a dedicated budget for the Ministry of Education. The analysis of the budget increase reflects all sectors, including the Ministry of Education. Regarding crore, the budget for Education, Sports, Arts, and Culture increased from 2022-23, 38.46, to 103.03 in 2024-24. Jal Jeevan Mission, Information, Education, Communication entails a revenue expenditure of 22.47 in 2022-23 increased to 70. Similarly, the Waqf Board on total educational empowerment has increased the revenue expenditure from 257.35 in 2022-23 to 1575.72 in 2024-25. At the same time, the budget for the statutory and regulatory body National Council for Vocational Education and Training is reduced from 20.24 in 2023-24 to 17.56 in 2024-25.

The Total- Scholarships for Higher Education for Young Achievers Scheme (SHREYAS) for SCs has increased from 304.2 in 2022-23 to 428 in 2024-25, and  SHREYAS for OBC and EBC risen from 75.37 in 2022-23 to 80 in 2024-25. The Eklavya Model  Residential School for the Tribal Research Information and Education Communication and Events has increased from 15 in 2022-23 to 32 in 2024-25. An additional Fellowship and Scholarship for Higher Education of ST students has increased from 145 to 165 from 2022-23 to 2024 -25. To autonomous bodies, Lakshmi Bai National  Institute of Physical Education has increased from 61 in 2022-23 to 78.51 in 2024-25. Among the departments, the highest proportion of the budget other than the Ministry of Education is allocated to the Department of Agriculture Research and Education, with 9934.59 revenue and 6.5 capital expenditure budget in 2024-25.  For the Ministry of Education, the Department of Higher Education is allocated a revenue of 47608.71 and 11.06 capital with a total budget of 47619.17. The total budget for the Department of School Education and Literacy is 73008.18, and the combined School and Higher Education Department budget for 2024-25 is 120627.87.

With rising demand in this emerging knowledge paradigm, the geopolitical resurgence, and the realignment of world power, higher education can unleash the youth's potential.  While the hope to become Vishwa Guru arises from ancient universities, such as Nalanda and Takshila, that transcended education worldwide, desperation exists with the current education system. In the past, seeds of innovative thinking failed to institutionalize education, especially in Aurobindo, Tagore, and Gokhle, due to a lack of government appetite to drive limited resources toward policy vision. The NEP 2020 is designed to steer a global vision with values by converting knowledge as an instrument of development, peace, and prosperity for a sustainable future. It has ignited the mind across the stream to rethink education and for co-creation of value for self and the nation and world at large.

Though the government may provide a budget to sustain and attain the above goals, higher education universities and institutes must improve governance to innovate and inculcate a dynamic curriculum. The fundamentals in the Indian education system have often remained rigid to adopt and fix as emerging skills that allow entrance into the market’s toolkit and overlap with humanistic vision. 

With the globalization of demography and technology, India envisions the New Education Policy (NEP 2020) to carve a niche as “Vishwaguru” as Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is more required than ever. However, budget is nutrition; it drives the ability of the higher education institution to bridge the desire and demand ingrained in the philosophical foundation. In this direction, the Kurul 385 of  Thiruvalluvar for promoting responsible leadership for students and the nation may be adopted as the North Star to produce, acquire, conserve, and dispense knowledge.