Collegiate tuition: how India compares

While raising tuition fees in government funded universities and aided colleges is a volatile issue in India, the world over the burden of higher education costs is increasingly being shifted to parents and students. According to D. Bruce Johnstone, writing in Financing Higher Education — Cost-sharing in International Perspective (Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, 2006), this shift of onus for provision of higher education which is increasingly being regarded as a ‘private good’ (cf. primary education which is regarded a ‘public good’), has resulted in “public institutions charging more nearly break even, or full cost fees for room, board, books and other costs of student living that may formerly have been covered mainly by government”.

Yet despite governments worldwide incrementally shifting the costs of higher education onto student beneficiaries (while simultaneously providing long-term soft loans), in contemporary India where public college tuition fees have remained frozen at 1950 levels, student/parent contribution towards actual cost of education aggregates barely 5-6 percent (cf. 27 percent in China).

Source: Financing Higher Education: Cost-sharing in International Perspective (Boston College Center for International Higher Education, 2006)