(a) whether it is true that students in rural areas have difficulty in accessing education at undergraduate level;
(b) if so, the details thereof; and
(c) the steps taken/proposed to be taken by the Government in making undergraduate level education accessible to students in rural areas?
MINISTER OF HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT (SMT. SMRITI ZUBIN IRANI)
(a) & (b) : Yes Madam. Students in some remote rural areas have difficulty in accessing higher education due to various reasons such as;
(i) low number of higher education institutions in these areas,
(ii) lack of adequate and proper infrastructure and poor quality of education in higher educational institutions,
(iii) the challenges of attracting faculty to higher educational institutions in these area due to lack of infrastructural support etc. Economic, social and gender inequalities also play a big role in such cases. A University Grants Commission (UGC) committee had identified 374 districts, which were educationally backward. The list is available at http://www.ugc.ac. in/oldpdf/xiplanpdf/newmodelcolleges EBD 16nov09.pdf
(c): The Government had, in 2009 launched a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS) called the Model Degree Colleges Scheme, which aimed at creating MDC in 374 Educationally Backward Districts (EBDs) in the country. This scheme has been subsumed in the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) which is aimed at inter-alia correcting regional imbalances in access to higher education in rural & semi-urban areas, especially the unserved and underserved areas with low access to higher education, by setting up quality higher educational institutions and upgrading existing ones.