Education Budget 2024: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is presenting the budget for 2024. She announced that the central government will provide Rs 1.48 lakh crore for education, employment and skills. Financial assistance of loan up to Rs 10 lakh will be given to students desirous of higher education in domestic institutions across the country. A new centrally sponsored scheme for skill development will also be started in collaboration with state governments and industries, in which about 20 lakh youth will be provided skills over a period of 5 years.
He announced that the Union Budget 2024-25 proposes to amend the Model Skill Loan Scheme to help 25,000 students every year. E-vouchers for loans up to Rs 10 lakh for higher education in domestic institutions will be given directly to 1 lakh students every year for an annual interest subvention of 3% of the loan amount. Apart from this, a total of 1000 ITIs will be upgraded, the course content and design will be made in line with the skill requirements of the industries.
The Finance Minister further announced that the government will provide internships to one crore youth. These trainees will get a stipend of Rs 5000 and a lump sum assistance of Rs 6000. The companies will bear this cost from their CSR funds. In the February edition of the Union Budget 2024, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had asserted that the number of women in higher education institutions and STEM courses has increased over the last 10 years, which she termed the impact of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The most surprising thing is that in this budget the funding for UGC has been reduced by 60.99 percent. It has been reduced to Rs 2,500 crore from last year’s revised estimate of Rs 6,409 crore. On the other hand, 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 interim budget for 2024-25, the total budget allocation of the education ministry this year has increased by 6.8 per cent to Rs 1,20,627.87 crore as against Rs 1,12,899.47 crore in 2023-24.