Transition to HE and Equitable Learning Outcomes: Challenges for Indian Higher Education

Abstract Indian higher education (HE) system has undergone rapid expansion over the last two decades, emerging as one of the largest HE systems in the world. Expansion is accompanied by the challenge of ensuring comparable quality education across a diverse institutional spectrum. Simultaneously, academic reforms in the sphere of general HE have been pursued in recent years to align HE with global quality assurance frameworks. This creates an intrinsic pull in the system where international benchmarks juxtapose against demands made on HE institutions (HEIs) to meet the needs of and support first-generation learners coming from disadvantaged backgrounds to enable them to transition successfully to academic cultures of colleges. This article addresses the challenge for equity and institutional challenge to find ways to engender the pedagogical and scaffolding processes accountable to the ‘educational outcomes’ through ensuring attainment of specified graduate attributes.