Budget 2026: Consequences for education?

Explore the implications of Budget 2026 on higher education and the shift towards learner-centric funding models.

Budget documents show the allocation for the Union Education Ministry in FY 2026-27 has risen to about ₹1.39 lakh crore, an increase of 14.21% compared with the revised estimates for the current fiscal, with a majority of this increase being reflected in the allocation for the Department of School Education and Literacy, where the allocation for Atal Tinkering Labs saw a jump of ₹2,700 crore from ₹500 crore last year to ₹3,200 crore this year.

No significant budgetary commitments have, however, been made to address core problems of mainstream higher education such as colleges and universities even as the government wants to achieve 50% GER in colleges. At the same breath, the Economic Survey predicts creative destruction in higher education. It says: “With the evolving modes of content delivery, traditional HEIs now compete with edtech platforms also.

As the quality of content and delivery becomes the primary metric of performance, it also becomes the measure for performance-linked funding, shifting the traditional institution-centric funding to learner-centric support, where learners are directly funded and have the choice of content providers. These developments blur ownership, location, legacy reputation, and other factors. Does this mean the government has given up on committing itself to a major revamp of the primary and higher education system committed to an aware, educated, skilled and productive population?

To decode the 2026 education budget, The Hindu will host a webinar titled, ‘Budget: Consequences for education?’, on February 7, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. The panellists include: Saumen Chattopadhyay, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Abhishek Malhotra, Assistant Professor, Sri Venkateswara College(DU); and Jones Mathew, Principal & Head of Institution Great Lakes Institute of Management Gurgaon. The webinar will be moderated by M. Kalyanaraman, who heads the education vertical at The Hindu.

Register now for free to ask questions and interact with the panellists. The three best questions will receive a free online subscription to The Hindu.

Saumen Chattopadhyay, Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi