An Analysis of Disparity in Access to Higher Education – An implication for Affirmative Action

This paper is divided into three sections; first section is concerned with establishing whether there is disparity in access to higher education or not. In this section we find that SC/ST among the social groups and Muslims among the religious groups are most backward; the second section we see whether this disparity exist even when we consider the enrolment ratio based on eligibility. This section is concerned with the debate on whether disparity across social or religious groups is because of disparities in school education or not. Some paper authors envisages that the existing disparity is not significant if one considers enrolment in higher education with respect to the eligible students. Our findings do not support this version. First reservation regarding this is how we define eligibility. Here eligibility has been defined in two ways; those enrolled in higher secondary and are in the age group 16-18 and those having education level of higher secondary in the age group 18-22. The result confirms disparity in access to higher education irrespective of the definition we consider. The third section is concerned with whether the existing disparity is because of economic factor ie deprivation is the main reason behind the inequality in access to higher education or this is because of institutional factors and m