New Delhi: The Higher Education Council of India (HECI), envisaged as a single higher education regulator, which will replace the existing three, may become a reality this year.
This HECI seeks to replace the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).
While UGC oversees non-technical higher education, AICTE oversees technical education and NCTE is the regulatory body for teachers’ education.
Sources in the government have told ThePrint that the UGC is ready to finalize the draft bill for setting up the HECI, which is likely to be tabled in Parliament later. monsoon session of parliamentStarting on 18th July.
Confirming the development, UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar told ThePrint: “We are working on the HECI draft bill. But more importantly, their feedback will be discussed with the stakeholders for designing the structure of HECI.
The details of the draft bill were also discussed in the three-day meeting. Academics from across the country were present at the education conference organized by the Ministry of Education in Varanasi last week.
four vertical
A source in the UGC told ThePrint that HECI has designated National Higher Education Regulatory Council (NHERC), National Accreditation Council (NAC) as the single point for accreditation for regulation of all higher education institutions (both technical and non-technical). will include. Institutions, Higher Education Grants Council (HEGC) to oversee the distribution of grants to institutions, and a General Education Council (GEC) to formulate the expected learning outcomes from higher education institutions.
HECI is the principal regulator envisaged under? National Policy on Education (NEP) 2020 However, the idea of HECI as a draft bill has been discussed earlier as well.
First introduced as the ‘Indian Council of Higher Education (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act) Bill’ in 2018, the HECI draft bill could not be finalized at that time. Renewed efforts to make HECI a reality were launched under Dharmendra Pradhan, who took over as the Union Education Minister in July 2021.
Underlining the relevance of a single higher education regulator, the NEP 2020 document says, “There is a need for a complete overhaul of the regulatory system to reactivate the higher education sector and enable it to flourish.”
It further adds that the new system should ensure that the specific functions of regulation, accreditation, funding and educational standard setting are performed by separate, independent and empowered bodies.
(Edited by Amritansh Arora)
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