Higher education in focus as spending nearly doubles in a decade

The Centre’s spending on education has nearly doubled to Rs 1.21 lakh crore from Rs 68,875 crore in 2014-15.

The share of higher education in the budget has risen steadily after the the Modi government came to power in 2014-15, a Moneycontrol analysis has found.

The Centre’s spending on education has nearly doubled to Rs 1.21 lakh crore from Rs 68,875 crore in 2014-15, with the government shifting focus on higher education.

The share of higher education is likely to rise to 40 percent in 2024-25 from 33 percent a decade ago. In 2023-24, 44 percent of the Budget was spent on education as per revised estimates.

While spending on higher education expanded at a compounded annual growth rate of 10.6 percent, spending on schools has grown at a slower pace of 5.3 percent between FY15 and FY24..

Covid brings a change

The government's education spending has a clear pre-COVID and post-COVID demarcation.

While the spending on higher education grew over three times the pace of the expenditure on schools and elementary education, school education spending has picked up pace post-Covid.

Since FY20, spending on schools has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.4 percent against 11.4 percent for higher education. In contrast, school spending expanded at 2.8 percent per annum between FY15 and FY20.

IITs get more

Analysis shows that spending on research and innovation has jumped, accounting for over 10 percent of total higher education spending.

The share of spending on premier institutions like Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has also grown. The share of allocation to IITs has likely risen from 17 percent of higher education spending in 2014-15 to 21.7 percent in 2024-25.

But the Centre’s education spending hasn’t kept pace with the GDP growth. While education accounted for 0.6 percent of GDP in 2014-15, the share declined to 0.44 percent in 2019-20.

It has since kept steady but is expected to slip below 0.4 percent again this year.