Participation and Success of Scheduled Castes in Higher Education: A Neoliberal Discourse on Indian Experience

India is the one of the largest higher education system in the world. Widening participation in higher education is still not inclusively achieved in this larges education system. Inequalities are persisting in many ways to access and participate in higher education. The inequalities are seen on the basis of interstate or regional disparity, rural-urban disparity, economic disparity and social groups’ disparity. Promising an opportunity to all for widening participation in equitable mode is blocked with inequality, exclusion, globalisation and international competitions. Contextualising international completion in the neoliberal era, this paper enquires the participation of Scheduled Castes (SCs) in higher education setting. It also tries to know the effects of neoliberal policy on the success of SCs in higher education. It is attempted to know the new challenges faced by the SC students at higher education level in the neoliberal era. Theoretically, this paper tries to link the neoliberal discourse with experiences of SC students on their participation and success at higher education level. This paper is based on both empirical and theoretical data, the data were analysed and interpreted through quantitative (descriptive statistics) and qualitative (case study-thematic analysis) methods. The findings of the study argued that in the neoliberal era the reduction of public finance, increasing levels of cost recovery, decline of welfare and philanthropic activities, rapid privatisation, introduction of self financing courses in public educational institutions, structural changes in fee adversely affect equitable accessibility of SCs in higher education. The policy of neoliberal era does not allow the SC students to attain and participate in quality private higher education. Only few well-off SC students’ parents can afford the private higher education and their success in higher education is stocked with the new challenges of neoliberal higher education.