Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan announced that the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) bill will be introduced in Parliament soon. The main objective of this bill is to set up a single higher education regulator in India. He further stated that the law and medical colleges will not be brought under its ambit.
In an interview with news agency PTI, the minister said the HECI will have three major roles including regulation, accreditation, and setting professional standards. The fourth vertical which is seen as funding, will not be under the HECI. The autonomy for funding will stay with the administrative ministry, said Pradhan.
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“We will bring the HECI bill in Parliament soon…after that also there will be standing committee scrutiny but we have started comprehensive work for everything. There are three major verticals. First is regulatory role, which UGC (University Grants Commission) does…it has already started lot of internal reforms at its level,” Pradhan said.
HECI proposed in the new National Education Policy (NEP) looks to replace all three major higher education regulators including UGC, AICTE and NCTE. While the University Grants Commission (UGC) oversees non-technical higher education, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) oversees technical education and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) is the regulatory body for teacher's education.
The concept of HECI has been discussed before in the form of a draft bill. The draft which seeks to repeal the University Grants Commission Act and provides for the setting up of the Higher Education of India was put in the public domain in 2018 for feedback and consultation with stakeholders. In 2021, the initiative to introduce HECI as a single higher education regulator was initiated by the union education minister.
(With PTI inputs)
