Prof. Tarun Jain from Indian School of Business (ISB) presented his research work titled “Common Tongue: The Impact of Language on Educational Outcomes”, at the School of Economics, UoH on April, 04, 2014.
Prof. Jain gave an account of the impact of official language policies on education using state formation in India. He stated that Colonial provinces consisted of some districts where the official language matched the district’s language and some where it did not. Historically, minority language districts have shown poor educational outcomes. Linguistically mismatched districts have 18.8% lower literacy rates and 27.6% lower college graduation rates, driven by difficulty in acquiring education due to a different medium of instruction in schools, he added. Educational achievement caught up in mismatched districts after the 1956 reorganization of Indian states on linguistic lines, suggesting that political reorganization can mitigate the impact of mismatched language policies, concluded Prof. Jain.
Prof. Tarun Jain works in the area of Economics and Public Policy. His website is: http://www.isb.edu/faculty/
The paper can be accessed at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1947148#%23
By Kumar Ashish, Research Scholar in Economics, UoH