Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the Centre will provide Rs 1.48 lakh crore for education and employment and skill. Financial support for loans up to Rs 10 lakh will be given to students aiming for higher education in domestic institutions.
New centrally-sponsored scheme for skilling in collaboration with state governments and industries. About 20 lakh youth will be skilled over a 5-year period.
A total of 1000 ITIs will be upgraded, course content and design will be aligned to the skill needs of industries.
The FM further announced that the government will provide internships to one crore youth. These interns will get Rs 5000 as stipend and one time assistance of Rs 6000. The companies will bear the cost from their CSR funds govt’s internship scheme.
In the February edition of Union Budget 2024, the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had stressed that there has been an increase in higher educational institutes and women in STEM courses in the last 10 years, which she said were the effects of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 .
However, in a surprise move, the funding for UGC was brought down by 60.99 per cent— it was brought down to Rs 2,500 crore from the previous year’s revised estimate of Rs 6,409 crore. On the other hand, the grants for central universities saw an increase of over Rs 4,000 crore with Rs 15,928 crore allocated for the financial year 2024-25.
In the 2024-25 interim budget, the Education Ministry’s overall budget allocation this year increased by 6.8 per cent from Rs 1,20,627.87 crore as opposed to Rs 1,12,899.47 crore in 2023-24.
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