Why scholarships are important

IMPORTANCE OF SCHOLARSHIP IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM

The Indian education system has a series of issues in it. One of the major issues is the poor quality of education in government schools and colleges, where there is a majority of underprivileged children who go to take education. Regardless of allocating Rs. 94,800 crores for the education sector in the previous Union Budget and Rs. 99,300 crores in the budget of 2020-21, but still there is no prevention in the high level of dropout rate in the schools, especially for intermediate classes. 

There is another reason for the dropouts apart from financial constraints is the poor quality of education in government institutions. This makes a student weigh their options and job opportunities in the informal sector so they can earn sooner than expected. To achieve quality education in private institutions, scholarship has become an important tool.

As we have seen that all the educational institutions are increasing their fees to overcome funding cuts across the country, there is an urgent need to improve the allocation of scholarships.

There was an increase in the board exam fees for classes X and XII in all the CBSE schools, according to an assessment by India Spent in August 2019. The fee hike for general students is from 750 to Rs 1,500 (a 100% increase), for SC and ST students, it hiked from Rs 50 to Rs 1,200 (a 2,300% hike). 

The institutions like IIT, IIMC, AIIMS, and central universities such as JNU for higher education too have raised their fees. On the other hand, in the years between 2014-15 and 2019-20, there was a fall from 4.1% to 3.4% in the share of education expenditure in the total Union budget.

Therefore, there is a serious need for the government to improve in all the dimensions of scholarship allocation, its awareness, transparency, simplification of the application process and timely disbursals of the scholarship amount.  The shortage of funds is visible in the amount allocated for scholarships as well as the decreasing number of beneficiaries across categories of scholarships. 

According to the financial constraints which are faced by the Indian government, the situation is not seen to improve much in the coming years.

Currently, both the central and state governments are offering scholarships of more than Rs. 10,000 crores annually for pre-matric, post-matric, and higher education. Still, this has not impacted the Gross Enrolment Ratio in a meaningful way. Corruption and scandals make things worse surrounding the scholarship distribution. 

The private sectors are also funding in the education sector along with the government, the amount was Rs 15,742 crore between 2014 and 2019 which can also be directed towards the scholarships or education wallets. 

An education wallet has also been given to the students to utilize their scholarship fund the way they wanted- they can settle an education loan, buy stationery, uniform, and books or pay off the admission fee or the coaching or tuition fees. 

The students also have the flexibility to pursue higher education in their institute of choice without worrying about financial implications. By this education wallets or scholarships will improve the Gross Enrollment Ratio along with the improvement of the quality of education received by the students. Such measures were expected to help us tackle the problem of workforce participation in the formal sector effectively by the students.