Socio-economic and spatial inequalities in higher education access in India

This paper analyses higher education (HE) access inequalities in India, as its assessment is indispensable for the country’s timely achievement of the ‘SDG Target 4.3’. It analyses HE access in terms of the status of the HE age cohort’s ‘enrolment’ and ‘attendance’ in higher education. We use nationally representative data from the latest two NSS education survey rounds and employ logistic regression, concentration index and regression based-decomposition of the concentration index methods of analyses. Our analyses show that there has been an overall reduction in the HE access inequality in India between the NSS 71st (January–June 2014) and the NSS 75th (July 2017–June 2018) rounds. It is noteworthy that the contribution of ‘economic status of households’ to HE access inequality has reduced. But, the contributions of gender and place of residence have increased. Our findings have policy implications. We also report a serious gap in NSS education survey data and provide vital suggestions.