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@article{208019,
        author = {Shadab Khan},
        title = {Sustaining Aspiration: A Review of Coping, Support and Educational Ambition Among Muslim Students in India},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2026},
        volume = {13},
        number = {4},
        pages = {46-54},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=208019},
        abstract = {Indian Muslims occupy a paradoxical position in higher education. They constitute roughly fourteen per cent of the national population yet account for only 4.87 per cent of higher-education enrolment (Ministry of Education, 2024), and in 2020–21 they were the only socio-religious group to register an absolute decline in enrolment. Scholarship on this gap has concentrated overwhelmingly on documenting barriers like discrimination, poverty and institutional neglect while paying comparatively little attention to how Muslim students who do enter and persist in higher education sustain their ambition. This scoping review maps the fragmented literature on the coping strategies and the familial, community and institutional support systems that underpin the educational aspirations of Muslim students in India. Drawing on the capability-based concept of the “capacity to aspire,” stress-and-coping theory and the community cultural wealth framework, it synthesises the evidence across four themes, exposes a persistent deficit orientation in the field, and argues that the principal failure sustaining under-representation is institutional rather than communal.},
        keywords = {Muslim students; educational aspiration; coping strategies; social support; higher education in India; resilience},
        month = {September},
        }