Education is a pathway to social mobility, enabling individuals to rise above inherited socioeconomic limitations. In India’s legal education system, this ideal is increasingly undermined. Access to the premier National Law Universities depends less on merit and more on financial capacity. With fees ranging from Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh annually, far exceeding the average family’s annual income of Rs 2.76 lakh, many capable students are excluded before they can even compete.
This exclusion begins at the entry stage itself. For students from low-income backgrounds, preparing for the Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) is overshadowed by a pressing concern: Whether success will translate into affordability. As a result, many are effectively filtered out at the outset.
Those unable to access NLUs are diverted to traditional law colleges, which often lack comparable infrastructure and placement opportunities. Compounding this, the legal job market shows a clear preference for NLU graduates, sometimes restricting opportunities exclusively to them. Consequently, NLUs, originally intended to democratise legal education, have evolved into elite institutions, accessible primarily to those who can afford their high costs.
What went wrong?
Unaffordable and exorbitant education at NLUs has a structural cause. When the idea of National Law Universities was first conceived, the priority was to establish institutions that would guarantee high-quality legal education. However, in this pursuit, considerations such as accessibility and affordability received minimal attention.
Limited state funding is a major contributing factor to the high tuition. Despite the word “National”, NLUs are established by Acts of state legislatures and are cocooned away from political influence because Chief Justices act as their Chancellors. This is advantageous for autonomy but detrimental for finance. Because of their remoteness from state governments, NLUs are less accountable, which makes them dependent on their own revenue and allows them to charge outrageous prices.
Furthermore, NLUs fall under the purview of the Ministry of Law rather than the Ministry of Higher Education, which significantly contributes to their institutional neglect, as managing universities is not a primary mandate of the law ministry. Likewise, these institutions are not seen as politically relevant enough to receive funding because their enrollment is frequently less than 1,000.
Scholarships aren’t effective
While scholarship and financial aid frameworks exist in NLUs, their design and implementation reveal a far more limited impact. Most schemes operate within narrow eligibility criteria and cover only a small fraction of the student body. As a result, a substantial group of economically vulnerable students falls through the cracks: Those who do not qualify for targeted schemes yet cannot realistically afford the full cost of attendance.
The problem is not merely one of design but also of execution. The Central Government’s Post-Matric Scholarship scheme for SC students, for instance, includes a “Freeship Card” mechanism intended to eliminate upfront financial barriers. Under this framework, eligible students can secure admission without prepayment of tuition or hostel fees. They are required to register on the scholarship portal prior to admission, submit relevant details along with an undertaking to pay institutional charges within seven working days of receiving scholarship funds, and institutions are expected to recover fees only after disbursement. The scheme envisages a time-bound, largely paperless verification process to be completed within thirty days. Yet, in practice, many NLUs continue to insist on advance fee payments, rarely publicise the Freeship Card, and seldom inform eligible candidates of this entitlement—effectively neutralising the scheme’s core objective.
At National Law University Delhi, a significant portion of financial support is routed through government scholarships with strict eligibility conditions; some, such as the Central Sector “Top Class” scheme for SC students, are capped at a very limited number of beneficiaries each year. Although additional assistance exists in the form of university-administered need-cum-merit aid and fee waivers, these too depend on constrained endowments and discretionary allocation.
Taken together, these features point to a systemic gap between the promise of financial aid and its actual capacity to ensure access. In such a framework, affordability remains a decisive factor, and the burden of navigating financial constraints continues to fall disproportionately on those the system ostensibly seeks to support.
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Impact of affordability on accessibility
The poor policy design of inequitable entry requirements results in layered discrimination. First, at the pre-law school stage, where entry into a law school is contingent upon one’s economic status; and second, at the post-law school stage, where securing a job is influenced by the tag of one’s alma mater.
But even before that comes CLAT.
The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT)’s design and price are clear examples of structural discrimination. The exam costs Rs 4,000 for General and Other Backward Class students. Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe/Below Poverty Line/Persons with Disability category candidates pay Rs 3,500. This is despite a 2017 committee under the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) recommending that CLAT application fees be capped at Rs 1,500.
CLAT is significantly more expensive than other national entrance examinations such as JEE (Joint Entrance Examination for engineering admissions) and NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for medical admissions), both of which levy registration fees ranging from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500.
The financial barriers extend beyond the application fee. According to a report by Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access (IDIA), titled as “2020–21 IDIA Diversity Survey Report”, 80 per cent of successful CLAT candidates had attended coaching programs costing over Rs 50,000. This suggests a substantial financial barrier, demonstrating that the ability to pay for costly preparatory materials has a major impact on access to NLUs.
Over and above that, a 2020 study conducted by IDIA reveals a starkly unequal demographic profile within NLUs. According to the findings, a significant majority of students (77.86 per cent) had at least one parent who was a graduate, while only 8.35 per cent identified as first-generation learners. Additionally, 96.50 per cent of respondents reported having studied in English-medium schools, and approximately 51.06 per cent came from families with an annual income exceeding Rs 10 lakh.
In parallel, According to the IDIA Diversity Survey Report, SC students make up about 13.05 per cent, ST students 5.87 per cent, and OBC students 5.38 per cent of the total NLU student population, while the General category alone accounts for 58.56 per cent. This means SC, ST, and OBC students together form only about one-fourth of the student body, despite comprising approximately 75 per cent of India’s population.
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Way forward
NLUs must encourage inclusivity and diversity. Individuals who interact with peers from diverse backgrounds become more receptive to new ideas and challenges, while also developing their analytical and critical thinking skills.
A critical first step in resolving structural funding issues and enhancing affordability is the nationalisation of NLUs, as has been demanded by the NLU Student Consortium—comprising student body representatives of all National Law Universities.
This would guarantee consistent and significant funding from the Union Government. Parliamentarians Meenakashi Lekhi in 2019 and Sugata Bose in 2017 both presented private member’s bills in the Lok Sabha that proposed nationalising NLUs. These bills sought to obtain central funding, repeal state laws, and designate NLUs as Institutes of National Importance (INI). Although the bills were not passed at the time, there is a pressing need for their adoption to ensure sustained financial support and equitable access for marginalised and low-income students.
Nationalisation by itself is not sufficient unless it is matched by concrete steps to ensure affordability. One way to go about this could be to use a sliding-scale tuition system that is dependent on family income, as an alternative to standardised fee structures. Fees would be completely waived for students in the lowest-income quintiles, while students coming from higher family income brackets would make proportionate contributions.
It is equally important to address pre-entry inequity. Steps should be taken to restructure CLAT in a way that gives precedence to contextual thinking, legal awareness, and comprehension over memorisation or pattern-based aptitude, which would, in turn, reduce the need to rely on expensive coaching.
To make preparation more affordable for all applicants, the government and legal institutions could also consider setting up free or inexpensive preparatory institutes in every state and Union territory, together with national digital learning modules.
Lastly, it is important to recognise that without fundamental reforms in the governance structure, these policy initiatives would not be able to continue for very long. In order to do this, the National Council for Legal Education should be created to oversee fee regulation, guarantee diversity, promote transparency and accountability in faculty recruiting, academic standards and placements, and publish annual performance reports.
The author is a Kashmir-based columnist and National President of J&K Student Association. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)