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Higher education, reservation and scheduled castes: exploring institutional habitus of professional engineering colleges in Kerala

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Abstract

This paper seeks to unravel the institutional context of the educational experience of scheduled caste engineering students in Kerala, a federal state in India. Though much has been debated about equity of access in the domain of reservation policies in higher education while studying the caste question and educational equity, process and outcome dimensions continue to be understudied. By presenting ethnographic accounts of the educational experience of fourteen scheduled caste engineering students, we explain how different institutional cultures result in different experiences for students of similar educational and familial backgrounds. Our analysis suggests that the notion of institutional habitus better captures the impact of institutions on marginalised students. The paper concludes with a call for further research to explore the institutional habitus of different higher education institutions. The authors hope that such research would help in formulation of new policies and practices to facilitate institutional transformation and contribute to improved quality and equity of higher education in India.

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Notes

  1. Kerala is located at southern part of India. It is well known for its higher human development indicators, despite the lower economic growth. The disadvantaged groups supposedly have better life chances than in other states. Some of the reasons for this position include early political mobilization of lower castes, socio-religious movements, progressive attitude of princely states, efforts of Christian missionaries, cropping pattern, strict implementation of land reforms and consequent pro-poor development strategies of democratic governments (for further details, see Ramachandran 1996; Tharakan 2008). However, later critiques suggest that a significant proportion of historically marginalized social groups did not benefit from the Kerala model (Kurien 1995; Raviraman 2010).

  2. Ezhava is a former untouchable caste in Kerala. Their structural position in caste hierarchy is above scheduled castes and below the Sudra castes. However, as compared to SCs, they are land owning castes and dominant castes in many parts of the state.

  3. This includes Ezhava (9 %), Muslims (8 %), Other Backward Hindu (5 %), Latin Catholic (2 %), Other Backward Christian (1 %) and Kudumbi (1 %) (see Office of the Commissioner for Entrance Examinations 2011).

  4. Bujee is colloquial usage among the student community denoting exceptionally brilliant students.

  5. Courses where the students had failed to complete during the term and need to be passed to be eligible for graduation.

  6. “Van puli’ can literally be translated as “big tigers”. This colloquial usage in Malayalam denotes a person with the highest level of expertise in a field.

  7. Corporate firms visit the campuses to recruit the students. Students who have received the job offers are considered to be 'placed'.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Diane Levy for the detailed comments and suggestions that improved the paper greatly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Policy Research in Higher Education (CPRHE), National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), Sri Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi, 110016, India

    C. M. Malish

  2. Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, 110016, India

    P. V. Ilavarasan

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Correspondence to C. M. Malish.

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Malish, C.M., Ilavarasan, P.V. Higher education, reservation and scheduled castes: exploring institutional habitus of professional engineering colleges in Kerala. High Educ 72, 603–617 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9966-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9966-7

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