About the Book : The system of education in general and higher education in particular has been subject to criticism for its apparent in capacity to provide education relevant to the needs of the terming millions of India. It has been pointed out that higher education has developed an in-built process of metabolic degeneration in that about half of the student population is thrown by the wayside resulting in huge loss of human and physical resources. The author in this scholarly work has attempted to analyse the patterns, procedures and policies of financing of higher education and research evolved by the federal and the state governments and their specialised agencies. He has also sought to discuss certain basic policy issues pertaining to government support for higher education based on a micro-level investigation of four states representing the four regions of the country. The study represents a significant attempt to analyse the problems of higher education finance with particular reference to government to support for research. It has tried to lay bare the distortions and dichotomies that the system of higher education finance has developed. An attempt has also been made to offer suggestions for revamping the financial policies and procedures of the central and the state governments. It is earnestly hoped that the problems highlighted in this study will enable the administrators, academics and others concerned with educational finance to realise that basic structural modifications are needed in order to enable the institutions of higher education to become effective instruments of socio-economic regeneration.

About the Author : Jagdish Lal Azad (b. 1920) M.A., M.Ed., holds a Ph. D. degree from Delhi University. His early involvement with education was as a teacher and as an educational administrator which, late, continued with his association with the Planning Commission for a period of over two decades, from where he retired as Chief of the Education Division in 1977. Since then, he has been a member of the academic bodies of a number of universities, the International Educational Consortium and the NAYE Committee on Education for Self-Employment. He has also been Visiting Professor at the Universities at Vallabh Vidya Nagar (Gujarat), Baroda and Dharwad and a delegate to the 1971 UNESCO Conference of Education Ministers and those concerned with Economic Planning at Singapore. He has contributed extensively to learned journals and is the author of a number of books monographs on Educational Planning and Finance. He is currently Senior Fellow (ICSSR) at NIEPA, New Delhi. He is also honorary Director of a research Project Financed by the Planning Commission at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.