Rs 99300 Cr For Education, Budget Encourages Degree Level Online Education

Meeting the needs of an aspiring India in which all sections of the society seek better standards and access to education, the Union Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman announced a total outlay of Rs.99,300 crore for the education sector for the financial year 2020-21. “By 2030, India is set to have the largest working age population in the world. Not only do they need literacy but they need both job and life skills,” the Finance Minister said in her second Budget speech.

She also announced that degree level full-fledged online education programme will be started to provide quality education to students of deprived sections of the society as well as those who do not have access to higher education.

The minister said, “These (degree level full-fledged online education programme) shall be offered only by institutions who are ranked within top 100 in the National Institutional Ranking Framework.”

Reacting on the initiation of online education, Achin Bhattacharyya, Founder and CEO Notebook said, “In a country as big and diverse as ours, the only way to leapfrog and ensure delivery of quality education to students in every remote corner of the country  has to be centralized building of quality content and online delivery using best in class cloud based storage and technically robust delivery requiring minimal resources at the users end.”

Furthermore Sitharaman announces that about 150 Higher Educational Institutions will start apprenticeship embedded degree/diploma courses by March 2020-21. This will help to improve the employability of students in the general stream (vis-a-vis services or technology stream).

“The government will also start a program whereby urban local bodies across the country would provide internship opportunities to fresh engineers for a period of up to one year,” she said.

The Finance Minister, in her speech, also said that the New Education Policy will be announced soon.

Commenting on the Budget, Aman Mittal, Additional Director, Lovely Professional University said, ''We are happy that the Finance Minister has discussed the education sector in detail in her 2020 budget speech. Also, the push towards online education is a progressive move to achieve the GER targets set by the government.”

“While it is slightly disappointing that the education budget has only increased by 5.8% compared to 10% last year, what is heartening is that this is the first time the education sector is being seen as a progressive sector which could contribute to India’s growth story,” he added.