Newdraft lawmay signal better days for Indian varsities

There should be no curbs on autonomy, and no micro-management

It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that India’s higher education sector is in desperate need of reform. A new draft law, the Higher Education Commission of India Bill, that proposes to revamp the governance of higher education in India, could, then, signal better days for the country’s universities. The Bill proposes to replace the UGC Act, 1956, and rechristen the UGC as the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). The regulator, in its new avatar, will focus on setting, maintaining and improving academic standards in universities. The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development will take over the grant-giving functions. It is true that academic institutions in the country have never been completely free from government interference. But with the HRD ministry controlling university funding directly, the dangers of political interference in the running of these institutions increase manifold.

The UGC, a body of academics and experts, was envisioned as a “buffer” between the government and higher education institutions. However, interference by successive governments stood in the way of the agency fulfilling this objective. At the same time, the regulator remained a spectator to the falling standards of university education. The proposed new regulator, the HECI, intends to bridge this lacuna. However, its mandate of "improving academic standards with a specific focus on learning outcomes, evaluation of academic performance by institutions and training of teachers," is bound to raise fears about the regulator micro-managing universities.

The Indian Express, June 29