Government drafts Bill to replace UGC, AICTE with higher body
The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) announced draft legislation to create an overarching supervisory body for higher education.

It used to be said that if you cannot commit then form a committee to look into the matter. Somehow, the Government is now increasingly announcing the setting up of regulators and super regulators in areas where it has failed to reform. Higher education is one such area. The proposed draft Bill is in some sense worse than what the current regulatory apparatus is. It is moving towards more centralization rather than less, more homogenization rather than organic development of public universities, allowing for more political inference and hence less autonomy be it in hiring, syllabi setting or appointments. The proposed bill is quite in contradiction to the recommendations of the Yash Pal Committee recommendations which had stressed that the key reform needed is restoring the autonomy of universities and preventing politicisation of university administration.

It may be quite radical, but our view is that the current system is beyond repair and band aid treatment is not likely to revamp the university system. Thus, it is important that slowly a parallel system of private universities based on best principles of autonomy, pedagogy, funding and research be established. Yes it will initially lead to “cream-skimming” and the public universities may be left with the skim, but this may finally force them to change or perish. Eventually, a State university system co-existing and competing with a private university system will be possible. However, many steps will have to be taken soon in this direction. One such is the passing of the pending foreign university bill and the private university bill.