Higher education becoming costlier; study loans not reaching poor, marginalised: Parliamentary Panel |
New Delhi: The accessibility of educational loans has declined over time, even as the cost of higher education has gone steeply up, a Parliamentary Panel has noted, while recommending the government not to curtail or reject loan applications.
The findings were tabled in the Rajya Sabha by the Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth and Sports, headed by Congress MP Digvijaya Singh.
The committee noted that the majority of students from disadvantaged, rural backgrounds, and remote areas were “perhaps” not aware of the schemes being run by the government for education loans, despite the Department of Higher Education’s several initiatives for publicity of the PM Vidyalaxmi scheme.
The report painted a worrying picture of a system that, instead of closing the opportunity gap, continues to exclude........