Poster #25 - When Colleges Come Closer: The Effects of Local Higher Education Expansion on Educational Outcomes in India

• In Event: Friday Poster Reception

Abstract

Higher education in India has expanded rapidly over the past two decades, but access remains highly unequal across regions. The top 50 districts account for one-third of all colleges in the country (AISHE 2019-20). This means that students in less served areas must travel long distances or relocate to attend college. These barriers disproportionately affect girls and students from marginalized communities. These groups face greater mobility constraints and household-level restrictions on movement. Geographic concentration of colleges thus risks widening existing gaps in educational attainment across gender and social groups. This paper studies the impact of Model Degree Colleges established under India's Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a government program launched in 2013 to expand college access in underserved districts. RUSA targeted districts with low College Population Index scores, low female Gross Enrollment Ratios, and high shares of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (SC/ST) populations. I exploit the staggered rollout of Model Colleges and use a staggered difference-in-differences design to estimate the causal effect of gaining a local college on education and labor market outcomes. For this analysis, I use the data from India's Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from 2017 to 2023. The results show that opening a Model Degree College in a district increases completed years of schooling by 0.7 years among the eligible population. The effects are larger for girls than for boys, consistent with the idea that girls face greater barriers to attending college away from home and therefore benefit more when a college opens nearby. These findings have clear policy implications. Placing colleges in districts that previously lacked access generates meaningful gains in educational attainment, and these gains are largest among the groups that face the greatest barriers. The results suggest that reducing the distance to college is an effective way to improve human capital outcomes in underserved areas, and that spatially targeted investments in higher education can play an important role in helping India realize its demographic dividend.

Author

• Aditi Choudhary, University of Georgia
  Presenting Author