Educational Migration, Institutional Hierarchies, and the Emergence of Academic Alienation in Indian Higher Education

Abstract

The phenomenon of educational migration has come to represent a major characteristic in modern higher education in India, especially in the context of institutional stratification, competition in evaluation and growing inclusion. This essay discusses the idea of academic alienation, acquired compliance and the process of diminishing intrinsic motivation as linked consequences of these institutional organization arrangements. Basing on sociological studies of higher education and perspectives of motivation that pertain to the Self-Determination Theory; the research comes up with a conceptual framework that integrates performance-based academic cultures with the psychological experiences of learning involving students. It contends in its analysis that high levels of evaluative institutional cultures tend to promote strategic congruence and risk-averse academic behaviour even in high achieving students. Educational migration is another force that exacerbates these dynamics and introduces institutional pressure along with an increased family demand and investment and social mobility expectations. Instead of seeing disengagement as a personal shortcoming, the paper puts motivational decline in the political economy of higher education as a whole in the sense that the institutional structures contribute to the environment in which meaningful learning and intellectual work can be practiced