A place to stay near college: Centre’s plan to keep girls in higher education

The first official said, requesting anonymity, that the proposal envisages at least one dedicated hostel for girl students in each of India’s 806 districts over the next five years.

The hostels will be standalone and not connected to any institution, and they will likely be built at district headquarters, near clusters of colleges and universities. Further, the reservation norms applicable to higher education institutions would also apply to admission to these hostels.

“The proposal is aimed at building residential hostel facilities exclusively for girl students enrolled in higher education," the second official said, also requesting anonymity. “The facilities will cater to students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate courses, and a nominal fee may be charged for maintenance."

The budgetary allocation will be meant to cover construction, basic furnishings, wardens’ accommodation, kitchens, sanitation and safety-related infrastructure such as boundary walls and surveillance systems, while leaving room for states to adapt designs to local conditions.

The spending may be phased over multiple years to ease the fiscal burden and allow states to align projects with land availability and institutional needs, the officials said. However, the funding model—whether the hostels will be built under a state–Centre sharing arrangement or fully funded by the Centre—is still being worked out, the officials said.

To be sure, some hostel support does exist for girls in higher education through schemes such as the UGC’s Girls’ Hostel Scheme, launched during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012–17), and the Working Women Hostel Scheme of the ministry of women and child development, revised in 2017 and extended to students.

However, their coverage remains limited and uneven, with no universal district-level provision comparable to residential school systems, since the hostels are largely concentrated in metro cities.

Queries emailed to the spokespersons of ministries of finance and education remained unanswered till press time.

Experts said the proposal could help address one of the most persistent structural barriers faced by girls seeking to continue their studies beyond school.

“Providing dedicated hostel facilities for girls pursuing higher education is expected to instill a sense of security among parents, particularly in rural areas, where safety and accommodation remain key concerns," said Nishant Kumar, associate professor, Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University."

He added that there needed to be an emphasis on ensuring uniform standards and smooth operations, “as state–Centre cost-sharing models can face difficulties in fiscally constrained states".

Another expert said that while there is currently no mechanism to track possible percentage of dropouts at the higher education stage, the initiative is expected to help.

Arun Kumar, former professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, also said the government should focus on introducing new-age reforms in higher education to equip students, including girls, with contemporary skills and place greater emphasis on research and development, so that women also benefit and India’s overall outcomes improve.

Despite running one of the world’s largest higher education systems, India continues to struggle with a sharp gender gap in higher education. According to the latest Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023-24 data from the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, India’s overall literacy rate for persons aged seven years and above was 80.9%, with female literacy at 74.6% compared with male literacy at 87.2%.

Families prefer to discontinue their daughters’ education after Standard XII in rural and semi-urban areas, even when academic opportunities are available within the district, because higher education institutions are often located far from home where daily commuting is not feasible.

Aside from the limited and patchy coverage for structured higher education hostels, residential facilities for girls are currently largely available at the school level through government-run schemes such as Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas, launched in 1986, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas, introduced in 2004, and Sainik Schools, set up in 1961.

Notably, the government has been concentrating on women-centric schemes over the years.

These include the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), which focuses on improving sanitation and dignity through household toilets, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), which provides free cooking gas connections to women heads of poor households, Lakhpati Didi that help women self-help group members earn a sustainable annual income of ₹1 lakh or more, and NaMo Drone Didi, which seeks to provide women with drone technology for agricultural services and income generation, among others.

The budgetary outlay for the ministry of education was increased from ₹46,482.35 crore in FY25 (revised estimates) to ₹50,077.95 crore in FY26 (budget estimates).