India's higher education system now enrols crores of students every year, making it one of the biggest anywhere. However, it struggles with a regulatory architecture built for another era.
Four national regulators touch almost all of India’s college-going population.
The University Grants Commission sets the broad rules for the vast majority of learners (~80 percent). Technical, teacher education, and architecture programmes fall under the jurisdiction of the All India Council for Technical Education, the National Council for Teacher Education, and the Council of Architecture, which together supervise over 10 percent of the rest.
Parents, employers and students are increasingly asking a simple question: can this system actually deliver strong learning outcomes and meaningful careers?
The National Education Policy, 2020 argued that regulation should be firm on ethics and quality, yet minimal in everyday interference to provide greater autonomy for well-performing institutions.
This balance is surprisingly difficult to achieve when multiple regulators issue separate norms for the same institution. A single university that offers BA, BTech, and BEd programmes may need to fill more forms than whole classrooms in a semester to satisfy the requirements of different regulatory bodies.
The Union government has now placed the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill before parliament. It aims to tackle this long-pending problem by setting up a Shiksha Adhishthan as the apex regulatory body for higher education.
It will have three specialised councils under it—Viniyaman Parishad (Regulatory Council), Gunvatta Parishad (Accreditation Council), and Manak Parishad (Standards Council). The old regulators will now give way to a single, harmonised framework, while institutions of national importance will retain their autonomy.
At its core, the Bill insists that standard-setting, regulation and accreditation cannot be housed under one roof.
The Standards Council will outline what good teaching should look like in various disciplines and keep those expectations aligned across the system. In architecture, the CoA would focus on defining good practice, while leaving enforcement to the new regulator.
To oversee standards, the Regulatory Council will use a digital portal, drawing on data that institutions themselves publish in advance. The Accreditation Council will oversee an independent ecosystem of accreditation agencies and assess quality.
When one body does not design standards, regulate and rate performance at once, conflicts of interest are reduced and credibility increases.
Another notable feature of the proposed Adhishthan is its inclusive structure—more akin to a round table than a command centre, with state representation and academic leadership integrated into decision-making. State governments will still decide where new campuses are established and what programmes are offered.
Now they will also sit at the table where standards and regulations are discussed. The model creates a participatory platform to share responsibility and accountability. This co-operative approach helps address a common concern that a national body could centralise control and weaken the federal balance.
What would all this mean for students, the real stakeholders? When clear benchmarks and open accreditation reports judge colleges, students, especially those from smaller towns, can make far more informed choices about where to enrol. It provides for a grievance system that is accessible and responsive. Students can provide feedback on academic quality, infrastructure, governance and campus life so that it becomes a formal input into ranking and accreditation.
For institutions, the Bill promises both simplification and greater autonomy for those that perform well. A single digital dashboard will require institutions to publish key facts, from finances to faculty strength, which regulators and accreditors will then use instead of repeatedly requesting for data. This means approvals can move more quickly and objectively.
The youth dimension is critical. What if a working professional could return after a decade to stack a new qualification onto an old degree without fighting fresh regulatory hurdles? An aligned regulatory system can make it easier for institutions to design such programmes. Interdisciplinary and flexible curriculums allow students to explore diverse fields and reskill or upskill over time.
A stronger focus on research and innovation encourages problem-solving, creativity and self-reliance. If regulation supports these goals, India can create a broad talent pool ready for new-age challenges in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.
The Bill explicitly recognises the value of global best practices. Instead of importing a foreign template, the Bill integrates international lessons with India’s own institutional experience into a regulatory ‘operating system’ that the world can recognise and trust, while retaining national values and priorities.
The Bill aims to create an ecosystem where institutions move from overlapping procedures to more coordinated processes and from ambiguity to objectivity. It eschews a control-heavy mindset and lays a foundation for collaboration, academic judgement and institutional autonomy.
When regulatory requirements are simpler and clearly tied to learning outcomes, administrative work consumes a smaller portion of a faculty member’s effort. They can now focus more on research, pedagogy and programme design. The Adhishthan envisions regulation as an enabler of Atmanirbhar Bharat in higher education, paving the way for a Viksit Bharat.
Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar | Former Chairman, UGC and former Vice Chancellor, JNU
(Views are personal)
