Higher Education among the Scheduled Castes: District Level Analysis of Uttar Pradesh

Scheduled Castes (SCs) are educationally backward community in India. Educational backwardness of SCs has its relation with socio-economic inequalities internalized in the structure of Indian social order. Thus, the present research paper is an attempt to study the spatial analysis of achievement in higher education among the scheduled castes in Uttar Pradesh. The paper is based on quantitative work of secondary data extracted from Census of India 2001 and Directory of Colleges, UGC 2001-02. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), Educational Attainment Rate (EAR) and Discontinue Rate (DR) has been computed for analysing the pattern of higher education at district level with the help of GIS mapping. Analysis of the paper reveals that there is very high variation in GER and EAR among the districts of Uttar Pradesh. Although accessibility to higher education among the SCs has increased in the recent decades, unfortunately, there is very high rate of discontinue in higher education which affects the EAR for SCs. There is a trend of spatial disparity, gender disparity and urban-rural disparity in achievements of higher education among SCs. Finally, from the analysis a conclusion has been drawn as ‘higher the proportion of SCs population, lower the GER and EAR’ i.e. lower level of achievement in higher education among SCs.