Educational privatisation and access to higher education: Experiences of Scheduled Caste students in Odisha

This article is an attempt to correlate evidence from theories and practice to examine the policy changes in higher education and how privatisation has adversely affected the access and continuation in higher education particularly in the case of Scheduled Caste (SC) students. It also examines the various obstacles encountered by SC students and how these impact their participation and performance at the higher education level. Theoretically, the article analyses the arguments made by different scholars on privatisation through content analysis method. Empirically, exploratory design is carried out in five higher educational institutions of Odisha. The analysis for the empirical part is done through data triangulation method. The article establishes how privatisation has eliminated the critical aspect of equity while totally doing away with the social objective of higher education.