The article examines the question of access to higher education (HE) in the context of unprecedented and irreversible changes in the higher education sector in the current scenario. It is based on a comparative study that seeks to probe the question of access based on a secondary data analysis using the NSSO data regarding household consumer expenditure in education in the state of Odisha, one of the poorest Indian states compared to the two advanced states in human development and access to technical education, Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively. The study finds that the overall access to HE in Odisha is a privilege of the urban area non-scheduled category of population belonging to the upper and middle income group, that too in case of technical/professional education. The poor representation of reserved categories in urban areas makes them incapable of making use of the reservation facilities provided by the government due to their ignorance. Most of the benefits of the reserved categories of population are appropriated by the affluent sections of population of that category. The overambitious urban students supersede their counterparts in Kerala and Tamil Nadu in primary and secondary education and rural students in terms of demand and access to technical/professional education.