Replacing UGC with HECI

Why in news?

Union government has proposed to replace the University Grants Commission (UGC) with a Higher Education Commission of India.

What is government’s plan on HECI?

• HECI will be the new, apex regulator for university and higher education in India.
• It has to set benchmarks for academic performance, ensure that institutions adhere to these and act against those that violate standards.
• Draft legislation appears to be part of a stated overarching strategy towards greater autonomy in institutes of higher learning, including the premier Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management.
• The broad thrust of the Higher Education Commission legislation is to separate governance from funding.
• The proposed commission will focus on academic issues, such as course curricula, faculty standards and outcomes, leaving “monetary matters” to the ministry of human resource development.

What is the reason behind government’s moves?

• UCG found to be an inadequate regulatory structure for higher education that has resulted in a visible deterioration in standards.
• The fund-granting process of the UGC and the technical education regulator All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)  has been plagued with allegations of corruption and inefficiency.
• Union government senses that Creation HECI offers a tremendous opportunity for the government to take a giant leap towards fixing a broken system at a time when the quality of human capital is increasingly determining the success of nations.

What are the concerns with government’s plan?

• Setting minimum standards such as faculty qualifications and infrastructure will be only one part of the commission’s mandate.
• The risk of political interference is the biggest challenge as the financial dispensation will, under the new scheme, be directly under government control.
• In regard with IIT and IIM, both sets of institutions have been granted a greater degree of autonomy in terms of board appointments, fee structures and admissions.
• But such autonomy went only so far; in January, the government proposed a new law establishing a Council of Institutes headed by the HRD minister.

Source: Business Standard, Economic Times