By  Dr Shirin Akhter & Sachin N.

The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) Draft Guidelines and Draft Regulations on Minimum Qualifications, Recruitment, and Promotions (2025) are hurriedly being pushed as necessary compliance with short deadlines and smaller discussion windows. Any policy push, when rushed, gives a feeling of imposition and hidden implications. It is hence important to critically examine the impact of these guidelines on public-funded education, academic autonomy, faculty welfare, and their overall ideological imperative.

The New Education Policy 2020 has adopted Four Year Under Graduation (FYUG) and the first batch of these students will graduate only in 2026. Drafting higher education and research regulations without monitoring the implementation aspects and learning outcomes of the students under NEP FYUG looks academically unsound. This has already raised the concerns of the two crucial stakeholders, viz., teachers and students. Teachers are also agitated by the fact that these drafts have not been accompanied by the due UGC pay revision process as in the past.

Centralisation and the Erosion of Federalism

At the heart of these regulations lies a calculated attempt to dismantle the rights and powers of the elected governments in the states and replace them with the centre government-controlled gubernatorial architecture. The inclusion of a UGC nominee in the search committee for the Vice Chancellors comes off as a centralising move that interferes and curtails academic autonomy. Further, the guidelines empower Governors—who serve as Chancellors—to play a decisive role in the appointment of Vice-Chancellors, overriding the authority of state governments and search committees. This move has been widely opposed by opposition-ruled southern states, which recognise it as a blatant attempt by the BJP-led central government to control university administration and impose ideological hegemony. Even NDA allies have raised concerns over the centralisation of power in these Drafts.

The UGC, as per the 1956 Act,  was envisaged as essentially a grants body supporting academic research and innovation in higher education that was also to set minimum standards for higher education institutions. Over the last decade, UGC’s role in disbursing educational grants to HEIs has been weakened by the adoption of loan-based funding (through HEFA) that is ruled by a market imperative, unlike the welfare motive of grants. At the same time, it has become more intrusive into the governance structures beyond its mandated domain with politically motivated interventions. UGC’s regulatory teeth are weaponised through the kind of policy overreach evident in the Drafts in question to undermine the concurrent nature of education in government policy.

This story was originally published in countercurrents.org. Read the full story here.