Response to the Draft Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of
University Grants Commission Act) Act 2018 In response to the public notice
issued by the Ministry of Human Resource Development seeking feedback on
the Draft Higher Education Commission of India Bill 2018 from
“educationists, stakeholders and general public”, I would like to strongly
oppose this move to centralise, bureaucratise, and establish absolute
government control on higher education in the country. In its Press
Release, the government has cited the bill as “downsizing the scope of the
Regulator”, “removing interference in the management issues of the
educational institutions”, and improving academic standards, but a reading
of the Bill, actually reveals the opposite intention, that will have a
disastrous effect on the access that India’s young people will have to
higher education, as well as the creation of jobs in the education sector.
By withdrawing financial powers from the regulator and handing them over to
the central government, and by giving the HECI unilateral and absolute
powers to authorise, monitor, shut down, and recommend disinvestment from
Higher Educational Institutions (henceforth HEIs), the Draft Bill will
expose higher education in the country to ideological manipulation, loss of
much needed diversity as well as academic standards, fee hikes, and
profiteering. It will also contribute to greater marginalisation and
disadvantage of millions of students, particularly from the socially
oppressed sections, and imperil many educational institutions. In my
opinion, rather than dismantling the University Grants Commission, the
attempt must be to strengthen its consultative and enabling architecture,
in such a way that promotes access, diversity, and quality. I would like to
place on record my objections to the clauses to the Draft HECI Bill, as
below. I urge the government to withdraw this Bill, and initiate a
discussion with teachers and students organisations and other stakeholders
for suggestions as to how the UGC and its functioning may be improved.
Section 3.6: While the UGC Act 1956 clearly mandated that the Chairman of
the Commission “shall be chosen from among persons who are not officers of
the Government or any State Government” – precisely with a purpose to
maintaining the autonomy of the Commission from any form of direct
interference by governments – Section 3.6 of the Draft HECI Bill drops this
necessary condition for the Chairperson’s appointment. The Chairperson of
the proposed Higher Education Commission can now be selected from among
functionaries of the Central or State governments, provided he/she
satisfies either of two conditions listed under Section 3.6 – none of which
comes into conflict with his/her holding an office of the government at the
time of appointment. Not only that, the same Section 3.6 makes the
appointment of the Chairperson of HEC incumbent on the decision of a
Search-Cum-Selection-Committee (ScSc), headed by Cabinet Secretary and
flanked by the Secretary of Higher Education (both GoI employees). The
principle of non-intervention that was enshrined in the letter of the UGC
Act, as an acknowledgment of the need for autonomy in educational
policy-making, is discarded by the proposed HECI Bill with regard to the
very setting up of the Commission. Section 3.6(b) of the Draft Bill
maintains that the Chairperson of the proposed Higher Education Commission
of India may be “an Overseas citizen of India”. We find this unacceptable,
as the Chairperson of such a Commission must be someone who is a resident
citizen of India, bound by its Constitution, with the requisite experience
of teaching/administration in the Indian Higher Education sector. Section
3.8: It is apparent from Section 3 of the Draft Bill that teachers have
been pushed out of the Commission, almost entirely. Though the total number
of members of the Commission has gone up from ten to twelve, the
representation of teachers has been ominously reduced to just two. Whereas
the earlier UGC Act ensured a minimum of four teachers in the 10-member
Council and that at least 6 were not officers of State/Central governments
(Section 5.3, UGC Act 1956), the HECI is proposed to be packed with
government nominees, chairpersons of regulatory bodies, university
administrators, but no teachers. In a body that is purportedly responsible
for determining quality of education, learning outcomes, and other
functions of academic content, we find it shocking that university
professors — the only group qualified to deliver in this respect — have
been so purposely reduced to an ineffectual minority. The UGC Act provision
that not less than one-half of the members of the commission must not be
officers of the Central Government or of any State Government has been
omitted, leaving the door open for a commission comprising an overwhelming
majority of government officers. Further, inclusion of a “doyen of
industry”, where there are no definitions of who so qualifies to be termed
as such, is highly inadvisable. Sections 8 and 9: The Draft HECI Bill
provides for Chairpersons and Members to declare the extent of their
interest, “whether direct or indirect and whether pecuniary or otherwise,
in any institution of research or higher educational institution or in any
other professional or financial activity.” (Section 9.1) We find that the
measures to address conflict of interest in the Draft Bill to be highly
inadequate — mere publicity on the HECI website and self-recusal from
participation in relevant decisions can be no deterrent to attempts to
mould national educational policy for self-interest. Section 12.1: The Bill
provides for appointment of the Secretary to the Commission, “who shall be
an officer in the rank of Joint Secretary and above to the Government of
India”. Since as Section 14 goes on to state, all “instruments” – barring
“orders and decisions of the Commission” – shall be “authenticated by the
signature of the Secretary or any other officer of the Commission
authorised in like manner”, it is amply clear that all
policy-correspondence as well as issues of funding will be incumbent on the
pleasures of the government. This corrodes the very ground of legislative
autonomy that justified the existence of the University Grants Commission.
Section 15: Although the HECI Act is being touted as a means of ensuring
both quality of education as well as greater autonomy to universities,
Section 15.3 of the Draft Bill empowers the HECI to lead to a further
degradation of both: 15.3(a): The HECI is empowered to specify “learning
outcomes”, which invokes formulaic expectations of what university
education must be oriented towards. Even the UGC’s efforts towards framing
model syllabi as guides for all colleges/universities across the country –
under the guise of a Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) – have been
severally pointed out as inadequate, given the disparate conditions and
infrastructures of learning in widely divergent local contexts. To say that
students must learn X and Y by the first year, for example, is to void the
classroom situation of material references to or historical indices of
privilege and discrimination. To argue that SC/ST/OBC students, with their
histories of deprivation, must achieve the same “learning outcomes” as
those coming from metropolitan contexts of privilege is to argue against
the very logic of reservation in public institutions. This will eventually
push the frontiers of higher education towards a standard quantum of
‘merit’ (measured as learning outcome), thus forcing those who cannot live
up to it to either drop out of universities or fail miserably. While very
general directions as what should be the curricular design of what, say, an
undergraduate programme should guarantee its learners are desirable, any
measure that stamps out diversity as well as innovation is unwelcome.
15.3(b): The HECI is also empowered, like the UGC was, to “lay down
standards of teaching / assessment / research”. It should be noted that the
UGC could, correctly, only set minimum standards, so the proposed HECI has
been given extraordinary powers of undermining institutional autonomy. The
substantive struggle of universities with the UGC has been in the last few
years, to ensure that its minimum regulations do not achieve the status of
maximality. It is imperative to maintain institutional autonomy if quality
is to be ensured, and an enabling framework that allows universities to
harmonise their standards with the regulator’s expectations must be
created. 15.3(c): The HECI has been given the power to carry out a yearly
academic performance evaluation of universities. We find this
bureaucratisation unacceptable and completely unfeasible. To audit the
performance of public institutions and ascertain their fitness to function
is to also come up with differential funding parameters for different
orders of ‘performance’. This kind of graded financial liability (on the
part of the government) towards grossly disparate contexts of performance
across HEIs will not only create a few centres for excellence at the cost
of all others, but will also strengthen existing hierarchies between
regional and metropolitan institutions. Further, it is highly unlikely that
the Commission will be able to do any kind of meaningful yearly evaluation
of the 789 universities that the UGC website says are in existence today.
All that will result from this power is a highly partial process that will
disrupt the functioning of universities, and convert ‘performance’ into a
punitive category. 15.3(d): The Draft Bill makes the HECI inherit the UGC’s
function of promoting research, except that the divestment of its financial
powers means that it will only be able to “coordinate with Government for
provision of adequate funding for research”: This will make all HEIs
subject to the interests of the political parties in power, and subject
directly to their ideological manipulation. Compared to the UGC, which had
financial powers, and because it was composed of academics and was tasked
with making decisions after consultation with universities, this will make
funding for research contingent on political considerations rather than
those attendant on international standards of knowledge creation. This will
have an adverse effect on the standards of research carried out in Indian
universities. Furthermore, it also appears that the HECI will no longer
have funds of its own to promote research like the UGC did, so that the
Commission’s role in furthering research (through fellowships, research
projects, travel grants) will be non-existent. 15.3(e): The HECI is
supposed to evolve a robust accreditation system for evaluation of academic
outcomes by various HEIs, thereby subsuming the role of the National
Accreditation and Assessment Council. This proposal is to tie in NAAC
scores to funding allocation, at the very least (as well as performance
targets), in a manner that will only prove detrimental to the development
of teaching and research in newer and less privileged institutions. One
presumes that the metric that will be employed is that the lower the NAAC
grade, the lower the government funding and the more impossible the
improvement. Such policy direction has already been hinted at in the
recommendations of the Subramanian Committee Report for New Education
Policy 2016. This will only institute a terrible vicious cycle, which makes
performance the policy-basis for funding – rather than the other way round.
15.3(g) and 15.4.(f): The HECI is empowered to “order closure of
institutions which fail to adhere to minimum standards without affecting
the student’s interest or fail to get accreditation within the specified
period”. This power to close down institutions in a country that fails to
provide enough HEIs has to be wielded with great caution, and with checks
and balances, and a clear and detailed specification of what protecting the
student’s interest must entail. While there is no question of granting
impunity to incidents of fraud being perpetrated on students and their
families — and it should be noted that this is a penal offence which can
easily be prosecuted — the non-availability of enough publicly funded HEIs
is the major reason why students flock to such institutions at exorbitant
costs. Arbitrary closure, or threats thereof, shall not only deprive
students of the only education that they can access, it will also put the
livelihood of teachers and staff employed in these institutions in peril.
Finally, such unbridled power shall in all likelihood fuel corruption.
15.4(c) and 15.4(d): The HECI is empowered to specify standards for grant
of autonomy and Graded Autonomy. The proposed move, which has in fact
already been initiated by the UGC, is intended to divest the state’s
investment in HEIs that perform according to standards it sets. This will
entail a marketisation of HEIs, fuelling fee hikes and greater job
insecurity, and will invariably lead to a complete constriction of access
to the better performing institutions to poor and disadvantaged students
(who constitute the bulk of the population entering higher education).
15.4(g): The HECI is also tasked with the development of “norms and
mechanisms to measure the effectiveness of programmes and employability of
the graduates”. The criteria used to determine “employability” do not come
from within the educational domain, as the availability of employment in
the country has to do with macro-economic factors. To transfer the burden
of employability onto the HEIs, in the form of a conditionality for funding
or as a performance index, is unfair. 15.4(l): The HECI is empowered to
“specify norms and processes for fixing of fee” and to advise governments
on “steps to be taken to make education affordable for all”. While The UGC
Act had a very detailed section on fees (as well as subsequent regulations)
on fees and a prohibition on donations, the HECI Bill makes this singularly
most important provision mere matters of advice. This also signals the move
from a state subsidy model to a loan-assistance policy for select private
individuals – thus making way for a general user-pay principle in the
funding of public education. 15.7: The HECI shall also “discharge such
other functions in relation to the promotion, coordination and maintenance
of standards in higher education and research as the Central Government may
subject to the provisions of this Act, prescribe.” With the HECI’s
forfeiture of minimum structural autonomy from the government of the day,
it is now perfectly possible for the latter to dictate the terms and
conditions of enrolment as well as content of academic courses in the name
of ensuring uniformity. Although the HECI Act is being publicised as giving
autonomy to HEIs, the provisions of the Draft Bill actually invest the HECI
and the Central Government with extraordinary powers, without any checks
and balances. Individual HEIs have no power to demand consultation,
inquiry, or even appeal against any of its decisions. The HECI Act sets up
the regulator as a gatekeeper who manages the market and the tractability
of the workforce it produces — the goal is to create an authority that has
total control over the market, including the power to expel those that
exact continued subsidy from the state. Compliance will demand from HEIs
absolute obedience, to an authority that is ruled by political expediency
and with very little expertise in education. Section 16.1: By this
provision, no HEI established after this Bill is passed can start awarding
degrees unless it is authorised, and Universities established before it
will be considered authorised for THREE YEARS only, after which it may be
revoked. This will create grave uncertainty in well-established
institutions, and will certainly harm students’ interests, who may be
enrolled in courses for longer than three year duration. As the section
makes authorisation contingent on achieving a set of goals over a decade,
this will lead to re-orientations in HEI policies based not on academic
considerations, but severe pressure on administrators and teaching
communities. The provision for imposition of penalties contained in Section
23 may be useful for a political party wishing to enforce instant
obedience, but are of no value to those actually working in the education
sector, where a culture of reasoned argument and careful consideration must
be the norm. Section 24: Sections 12(e)-(g) of the UGC Act 1956 prescribed
an advisory role for the Commission, with regard to information necessary
or sought by the Central or State Governments. The Draft HECI Bill 2018
performs a complete inversion of this. It mandates the setting up of an
Advisory Council within the Commission, chaired by the “Union Minister for
Human Resources Development” and with “Chairpersons/Vice-Chairpersons of
all State Councils for Higher Education as members”. (Section 24.1) The
presence of a government-controlled advisory organ in the Commission,
headed by the HRD Minister, puts all pretensions of legislative autonomy to
rest and structurally subordinates higher education to the political
intentions of the government of the day. Section 26: The provision that the
HECI Act will have an overriding effect is extremely disturbing, as this
will effectively nullify the various Acts of Parliament that have
constituted existing universities. These acts have promoted a diversity of
orientation in institutions, suited to the plural needs of our diverse
country, and have maintained the distinctiveness and relevance of our
institutions to their local and national milieu. Reducing all HEIs to a
dull uniformity will not produce a responsive higher education. Since
HECI’s “Regulations relating to promoting quality and setting standards
shall have prior approval of Central Government” (Section 29), it is the
government who will effectively run every single HEI in the country. The
Draft HECI Bill will entrench a regulatory system that will just liquidate
otherwise all the investments in education that the Indian people have made
through the taxes they have paid for the last seven decades. The “changing
priorities of higher education” – as the Draft Bill 2018 claims to address
– do not warrant the setting up of a Commission that delinks regulatory
functions from funding commitments. By desiccating the UGC’s
grant-disbursal powers and locating them solely in the Central government,
the proposed Commission will become a means to ensuring ideological
compliance from universities as the pre-condition for public funding. This
further produces the risk of a punitive disciplining of institutions,
through a deliberate withdrawal of funds by the government at will, on the
slightest pretext. Most significantly, not only does the Draft HECI Bill
violate the very idea of autonomy that the UGC was modelled on, but it also
goes a long way in insisting that universities and other higher education
institutions be reduced to organs of the government. I believe that the
HECI Act 2018 has the potential for adversely affecting the future of all
HEIs in the country by destroying the ground for their autonomous
functioning and mandating a compulsory interference from governments. It
would be best therefore to withdraw this proposed Act, in the independent
interests of a “scientific temper” and “spirit of inquiry” that the Indian
Constitution enjoins us to.
Dr. P. V. Konnur
Former LIS Professor,
Fulbright Scholar (UIUC, USA)
Chairman,
State Level Book Selection Committee
President
LIS Academy, Bangalore
Adviser, VTU Consortium,
Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi - 590 018
Mobile : 09449679737
E-Mail : pvkonnur(a)gmail.com
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