HEC Bill will lead to further centralisation of higher education: Experts

State officials and some renowned institutions have commended the separation of regulatory and financial functions

The draft Higher Education Commission of India Bill, 2018, which repeals the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act, has received more than 5,000 responses from academia, professors and universities in two weeks. In a spate of constructive criticism, it has triggered a debate on how access to, and quality of higher education in India should improve and accelerate. 

On the one hand, educationists, including former government officials, have raised an alarm over possible reduction of states’ autonomy, transfer of funding rights from an independent UGC to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and excessive centralisation. According to legal experts, though it