Reservation incentive for marginalised students to enter college, suggests IIM-A study

In a bid to assist the government in ensuring better participation of marginalised groups in higher education policy, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) has come out with a working paper on the same.

Among other things, the paper suggests that the higher education policy could focus on ensuring that students from marginalised groups are able to cross the threshold of higher secondary school to higher education.

Titled 'Access to Higher Education in India: An Exploration of its Antecedents', the working paper is co-authored by Rakesh Basant, faculty member at IIM-A and Gitanjali Sen, assistant professor, School of Education, Shiv Nadar University.

According to the paper, the chances of under privileged groups entering college went higher once they crossed the school threshold as against low chances of a marginalised student making it to college before crossing the higher secondary school.

"Deficits for the under-privileged were found to be significantly lower among the eligible population, even after we control for a variety of other factors. Thus, once persons from under privileged groups cross the school threshold, the chances of them going to college are quite high. Once again, the results of data from other rounds corroborate these empirical conclusions," the paper suggested.

Adding further on the issue, the paper stated, "The importance of the additional control for access to secondary school also supports the argument. Clearly, a better understanding of the constraints on school education is critical if participation in higher education is to be enhanced."

What's more, the paper also analysed the impact of reservation in higher education on the marginalised or under privileged student groups.

"Arguably, reservation in higher education is an incentive to cross the threshold. Similarly, one can argue that job reservation can enhance the incentives to participate in higher education." the paper stated.

Moreover, the paper also raised questions over the efficacy of socio-religious affiliation to be the sole focus of affirmative action.

"Since many factors, other than socio-religious affiliation also influence participation in a significant manner, an exclusive focus on such affiliation for affirmative action seems inappropriate. The importance of economic background as well as that of location highlights the role of the supply side factors in affecting the participation of various groups," it stated.