EVALUATING THE DETERMINANTS OF QUALITY OF HIGHER EDUCATION:A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PUBLIC VS PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES IN MAHARASHTRA WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO QUALITY EDUCATION MODEL

From ancient times, India is well known for its scholars and talent. Even today, India is unceasingly progressing in education field. In growth story of India, higher education has always played a vital role. Higher education provide knowledge, develop the ability of students and give them a broader perspective of world and becomes input to the growth and development of country. Though India's central and state governments are making seamless efforts to make Indian Higher Education System world class, it is always bogged down by many challenges. So, the question arises whether students are getting good quality education and what are the determinants ensuring this quality. In same context, this research work focuses on identifting factors affecting quality of higher education and the extent to which these factors affect the quality. A comparative study is been performed to determine the status of Public and Private Universities in Maharashtra. Researcher has taken The Oregon Quality Education Model as base to define quality indicators while designing questionnaire. For data analysis, basic tools like table, frequency, percentage, graphs are used whereas for hypothesis testing Descriptive Statistics, Regression Analysis and t-test are used. The study concludes that, Industry involvement, Classroom Feedback, Status of Institute, Leadership that facilitates student, Infrastructure/learning resources, Teacher's Professional development program, teaching methodology, Students Engagement in academic & extra-curricular activities, Teacher's Research & Industry Collaboration, Participation of students in research activities are the determinants of quality of higher education. Also, Private Universities maintain better quality of education than Public Universities.