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Abstract

The rural areas accommodate almost 69 percent of population in India. Yet, issues related to access, expenditure and efficiency persist in context of higher education in rural areas. Number of institutions, GER across gender, UMPCE classes, and religion are lower in rural areas as compared to urban areas. Average private expenditure per student in technical education was higher than that for general education. Accordingly the access and the average private expenditure per student by students belonging to higher quintiles was observed to be higher than lower quintiles, more for males than for females and more so in urban areas than in rural areas. However, the provisions for scholarships and stipends appear to be distorted in terms of beneficiaries. Hence focused policy initiatives need to identify efficiently the beneficiaries for the policy incentives.