HRD Ministry floats bill draft to replace UGC with Higher Education Commission of India

New Delhi: The Centre is set to replace the apex higher education regulator body University Grants Commission (UGC) with Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) by repealing the UGC Act, 1951, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said on Wednesday.

"In a landmark decision, a draft Act for repeal of #UGC & setting up #HECI (Higher Education Commission of India) has been prepared," Javadekar tweeted.

He said the draft act is in accordance with the commitment of the government to reform the regulatory mechanism to provide "more autonomy" to higher education institutes to promote excellence and facilitate holistic growth of the education system.

The proposed Higher Education Commission of India would focus solely on academic matters and monetary grants would be under the purview of the ministry, according to the draft.

Presently, The University Grants Commission (UGC), which came into existence in 1953, provides financial assistance to eligible colleges.

The new Act will be called the Higher Education Commission of India Act, 2018 (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act).

The HRD Ministry has asked educationists, general public and other stakeholders to give comments and suggestions before 5 pm on July 7 on the draft, which has been released on its website.

The new Act is likely to be tabled in the Parliament during the monsoon session.

The government was earlier planning a single regulator for technical education, national council teachers training and UGC.

However, it has been decided to strengthen the higher education regulator as it was felt that the current commission remains preoccupied with disbursing funds to institutes and is unable to concentrate on other key areas such as mentoring institutes, focusing on research to be undertaken and other quality measures required in the sector.

Although the change is purportedly to make the higher education regulatory body more autonomous, the envisaged format in fact is likely to lead to greater control by the government of the time, with its own predictable political proclivities.

The current UGC structure is a statutorily stipulated panel, with a fixed term. And in the selection of the members to the Commission there is a certain level of insistence on academic credentials and freedom of decisions. As opposed to this, the funding agency being the central ministry of human resources development, the regulatory body will have shrunken autonomy in its decisions.

Further, the reform will suffer the violation of the principle that the general principle that the body taking the funding decisions should also be the one to monitor and ensure standards for obvious reasons.

And when the ministry of HRD will be the authority to take decisions regarding funding, it is by its very nature liable to be amenable to political compulsions with inherent risk of diluting standards. The academic considerations that UGC is heir to by its very genesis, may give way to appeasement of regional, political, religious and caste and even corporate interests.

(With input from IANS)