Education Ministry In The Process Of Drafting A Bill For Establishment Of HECI: Centre (Image: twitter.com/Drsubhassarkar)
The Ministry of Education is in the process of drafting a bill for establishment of a single education regulator for higher education, said Dr. Subhas Sarkar, Minister of State (MoS), Ministry of Education (MoE) while replying to a query raised by Jai Prakash, Member of Parliament in Lok Sabha. Accordingly, an umbrella institution, the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) will be set up as envisioned by the National Educational Policy (NEP) 2020, for revamping the regulatory system of higher education, the minister added.
Dr Sarkar has also said the Commission will function as the common, single point regulator for the higher education sector including teacher education and excluding medical and legal education, thus eliminating the duplication and disjunction of regulatory efforts by the multiple regulatory agencies that exist at the current time.
University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) are currently responsible for regulations of higher education bodies of the country.
Restructuring of higher education regulatory framework was suggested by Yash Pal committee back in 2008. The first draft of HECI bill formulated in 2018 was not finalised due to major concerns raised on some of its clauses mainly regarding the power concentration at the centre. The plan to establish HECI was first announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in the 2019 Budget speech. The bill was place in public domain since then for comments. However, in light of NEP 2020 recommendations, the establishment of HECI would be further accelerated.
NEP 2020 proposed four independent verticals for HECI – National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC) for regulation, General Education Council (GEC ) for standard setting, Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) for funding, and National Accreditation Council( NAC) for accreditation. As per NEP 2020 public and private higher education institutions will be governed by the same set of norms for regulation, accreditation and academic standards framed by HECI. This proposed structure ensures decentralization of power and minimization of conflicts of interests. The first regulator of HECI as recommended by NEP 2020 will be NHERC, which will function as the single common point regulator for the higher education sector that includes Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the National Institute of Technology (NIT), the Indian Institute of Scientific Education and Research (IISER), other Institutes of National Importance (INIs) and teacher education. However medical and legal education is excluded.
