Former Bureaucrat Warns India Faces Growing Risk of an Education Trap

India faces a growing risk of an education trap due to rising costs, falling public school numbers, and repeated exam system failures, according to former Steel Secretary Dr Aruna Sharma. With sixty-five percent of India's population being young, governance policies must build this demographic into a national asset rather than push students into cycles of debt and poor job prospects.

School Closures And Private Shift

Government school numbers fell from eleven lakh seven thousand in the twenty-fourteen to fifteen period down to ten lakh thirteen thousand in the twenty-twenty-four to twenty-five period, with ninety-four thousand public schools closing or merging over the decade according to Niti Aayog statistics. Ninty-eight thousand schools closed due to infrastructure issues like missing girls' toilets, while about one lakh schools had only a single teacher. Public school enrollment dropped by six percent as parents turned to expensive private options, and by twenty-eighteen nearly one-third of children attended private schools.

Higher Education And Governance

Public higher education institutions including IITs, IIMs, and Central Universities face severe financial pressures and large numbers of unfilled professor vacancies. Recruitment standards for professors and Vice-Chancellors have fallen, and the Gambhirdan K. Gadhvi versus State of Gujarat case ruled that Vice-Chancellor appointments made against University Grants Commission rules are void from the beginning. Meanwhile, competitive entrance exams suffer from repeated fairness and conduct failures, trapping hardworking youth in cycles of uncertainty.

Context

Education policy debates in India often focus on balancing universal access with quality improvements amid a massive youth population. Public systems historically provided affordable pathways for social mobility, but recent decades have seen widespread expansion of private schooling and commercialized higher education.