Towards a Toothless UGC

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has served India’s higher education system for over six decades. Like many other institutions forming its cohort, it has been struggling to cope with diverse responsibilities for some time. The struggle has as much to do with changed systemic circumstances as with the significant depletion in its own resources. It is not clear whether the central government’s move to repeal the act that created and empowered it with a financial role is based on serious dissatisfaction with its performance. Nor does the move seem to be inspired by a vision of the institution that will replace the UGC.

Named as the Higher Education Commission (HEC), this new institution will cover a considerable part of the UGC’s mandate, minus the latter’s financial role, which was represented by the term “grants” in its name. This function will go to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). Not surprisingly, the academic world is apprehensive that the move will increase the power of the ministry (read political leadership and the bureaucracy serving it) to curb what little autonomy is left in the system of higher education.