PM Modi wants overhaul of higher education regulators

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has asked for a new body to subsume the higher education regulators. The National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog has been told to suggest a new framework for the same.

A committee headed by NITI Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya and members from various fields of the academia has been constituted to give recommendations in three months, sources said.

A NITI Aayog functionary said replacing the existing higher education regulatory bodies -University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), National Council for Teacher’s Education (NCTE) and Medical Council of India (MCI) -- was on the agenda of the committee’s discussions.

The existing bodies could be replaced by a National Commission for Higher Education, whose operational framework would be formulated by the NITI Aayog panel.

The four bodies control some 50,000 educational institutions, with UGC being the oldest.-

Senior functionaries in regulators such as the MCI, the AICTE and the NCTE have of late been accused of corruption and favouritism in the absence of clear and transparent guidelines, leading to misuse of discretionary powers.

“Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) is keen higher education needs to be modernised and has to be of international quality,” a senior NITI Aayog functionary said, requesting anonymity. “Politics inside university campuses is not appreciated worldwide. They are places for debate and discussion for academic excellence.”

This comes as a number of central universities -- from Hyderabad and Delhi to Rajasthan and Jharkhand -- find themselves embroiled in controversies over so-called nationalism, leading to the arrest of some students and disciplinary action against faculty members.