John J. Kennedy | Will HECI Reform Higher Education In India, Or Simply Rejig Status Quo?

The Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) marks a pivotal juncture in India’s higher education reforms, promising to streamline governance by replacing fragmented oversight with a singular regulatory authority. As envisaged, HECI will subsume the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) to create a unified framework aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

Its stated focus aims to ensure academic quality, set robust standards for teaching and research, streamline accreditation, and foster institutions that meet global standards. While the government’s rhetoric of “less government, more governance” resonates widely, this initiative must be evaluated against structural challenges that have beset the sector for decades. The historical reality of duplicated regulators -- UGC for non-technical institutions, AICTE for technical colleges, and NCTE for teacher education-- has led to overlapping functions, duplicative standards and bureaucratic inertia.

The government’s consolidation seeks to establish distinct verticals for regulation, accreditation, funding and academic standards, with the hope that separating these will reduce conflicts of interest, simplify compliance, and incentivise innovation and efficiency.

A significant change with HECI is its much wider enforcement authority compared to the outgoing UGC, including the power to penalise defaulting institutions with fines or even closure.

This expansion of powers signals a departure from earlier regulatory limitations, giving the commission unprecedented sway over institutional compliance and accountability. The plan further envisages HECI conducting annual evaluations of all higher educational institutions, a task critics warn may be impractical given the sheer number of universities and colleges across India.

The model of mandatory authorisation for both new and existing institutions rekindles anxieties about bureaucratic bottlenecks, especially as the power to withdraw authorisation and close institutions looms large.

Though the intent is to foster excellence, independent review mechanisms and checks and balances remain ill-defined, raising transparency and due process concerns. These include risks for marginalised, rural, minority, and resource-poor institutions, where regulatory compliance could inadvertently become a barrier to survival. Thus, the so-called “light but tight” regulatory approach promised is quite ambiguous in practice.

In addition, the structure of HECI has raised valid concerns. Its composition is heavily weighted toward Union government officials, with only a minority of academics and industry representatives included. While the discourse promises greater institutional autonomy, the reality is a commission dominated by government appointees in key positions and secretarial roles. The ministry of education retains critical grant powers, and all major decisions – including authorising or closing institutions -- are ultimately subject to government approval. In tandem with these powers, HECI will set eligibility criteria for university leaders and introduce performance-based incentives for staff, pushing institutions toward standardised governance and outcome-based performance. However, some worry that these mechanisms may fuel ritual self-reporting and administrative burden, with the risk that governance will prize compliance over creative adaptation.

Moreover, the Centrally-constructed HECI paradigm raises pressing questions about India’s federal structure. Higher education in India has historically thrived on cooperative participation, with states shaping curricular priorities and governance models to reflect regional needs. HECI’s sweeping mandate extends control over both Central and state institutions, potentially curtailing local innovation, contextual priorities, and linguistic-cultural diversity. Critics argue that this centralisation not only threatens the organic evolution of regional higher education landscapes but also risks reducing states to peripheral actors; a national template devised in New Delhi could be imposed uniformly across diverse institutions, stifling the “multiple development pathways” essential for meeting India’s unique challenges of inequality, access and relevance. In addition, the loss of influence over standards, appointments, and programme direction for state governments and universities raises prospects for future conflicts.

Importantly, HECI’s framework is silent on equity safeguards: the inclusion of marginalised groups, affirmative action, and reservations sit outside the bill’s primary focus. The commission is expected to accelerate the ongoing trend toward privatisation and centralisation. This process may inadvertently make higher education less accessible and more expensive, particularly for rural and economically disadvantaged students. The rise of private sector participation in higher education and resource disparity risk tilting the landscape further against vulnerable groups.

While progressive in principle, the shift to performance-based funding could reinforce advantages for privileged institutions and leave laggards worse off. Political appointees presiding over universities could further diminish academic self-governance and increase federal control, amplifying the risk that political interference will compromise transparency. Another area of concern raised by critics but absent in the current framework is the potential de-emphasis on the Humanities and Social Sciences. In the push for standardised outcomes and regulatory efficiency, there’s a real danger of diminishing the critical thinking spaces that these disciplines foster, threatening the intellectual vibrancy that is central to a healthy university ecosystem.

HECI will undoubtedly introduce new mechanisms for accreditation, increasing accountability for academic outcomes and aiming to reward excellence through performance-based incentives.

However, academics have voiced legitimate fears that such systems can prompt ritual self-reporting and administrative overload, detracting from genuine educational innovation. The true measure of transformation should lie in expanded academic freedom, vibrant local autonomy, pluralism and equitable access, not merely in structural re-engineering or the adoption of centralised metrics.

Unless the everyday realities of students, faculty and administrators witness meaningful decentralisation of trust and empowerment, HECI risks becoming an administrative innovation that leaves unresolved the deeper crises of relevance, equity, and creativity in Indian higher education. Its promise may lie in modernising oversight, but pitfalls stem from mistaking centralisation and quantitative benchmarks for substantive reform. The future, therefore, depends on whether HECI can catalyse real transformation for higher education or simply rename the status quo.

The writer is retired professor and former dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Christ University in Bengaluru