By Kanchan and Narender Thakur
The Indian higher education landscape stands on the brink of its most significant regulatory overhaul in decades. With the Parliament session underway, the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill, a cornerstone of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, is poised for discussion and potential passage. While framed as a move towards efficiency and global competitiveness, a closer examination of the Bill’s architecture and the philosophy underpinning NEP 2020 reveals deep-seated concerns about accelerating privatisation, increasing centralisation, and exacerbating socio-economic divides in one of the world’s largest education systems.
The NEP 2020’s guiding mantra of “light but tight” regulation is particularly contentious. It appears to be “light” on free private entry and operational freedoms, but “tight” on controlling academic autonomy, lower public funding, and research agendas and pedagogical processes. This paradoxical approach centralises power in the hands of the new commission while loosening the leash for market forces. The policy’s heavy emphasis on “self-governance” and “autonomy” for institutions is increasingly seen as a euphemism for “self-finance”. Autonomy, in this context, appears less about academic freedom and more about market freedom — the freedom to set fees based on market principles and seek private revenue streams.
This market-driven logic permeates the policy. The NEP’s push for a “learning outcome approach” is criticised for treating knowledge formation as a mere production output, a metric borrowed from private firm economics. This commodification of education ignores the subjective, collaborative, and often intangible process of learning involving students, teachers, and the entire academic community. Similarly, the aggressive integration of Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses into mainstream higher education risks diluting the quality of both. Without adequately trained faculty, HEIs may deliver substandard VET, while the academic rigour of higher education could be compromised by courses ill-suited to its foundational goals.
Perhaps the most significant shift is the policy’s explicit equal treatment of public and private institutions. While framed as a level playing field, this de facto legitimises and promotes privatisation. It signals that profit-oriented investment in education is not just tolerated but welcomed on equal footing. The inevitable consequence is the ceding of control over fee structures to market dynamics, making education costlier and placing it out of reach for many. This is compounded by the proposed model of graded accreditation and autonomy, which could institutionalise a tiered system where highly-rated (often private) institutions charge premium fees, entrenching a cycle where wealth buys educational quality, further widening the socio-economic gap.
The governance mechanism proposed — Boards of Governors (BoG) for autonomous institutions — raises further red flags. While intended to professionalise management, the BoGs are granted sweeping powers without specifying the educational credentials of the BoGs. The mechanism also promotes the recruitment of contractual teachers. The move towards privatisation of education and contractualisation of teaching staff is not academic reform, but a market strategy to reduce the “cost of knowledge production,” jeopardising job security, academic freedom, and ultimately, teaching quality. The existing socio-economic inequality in HEIs, evidenced by the low representation of students and teachers from disadvantaged castes and classes in public and private colleges and universities, is likely to be aggravated. The increased prominence of private players, driven by the HECI framework, forces a tragic compromise between equity and quality.
As the HECI Bill awaits parliamentary scrutiny, stakeholders — students, academics, and policymakers — are urging a rigorous debate. The question is not whether reform is needed; the Indian higher education system certainly requires agility and quality enhancement. The question is whether the path charted by the HECI, under the auspices of NEP 2020, is one that leads to inclusive excellence or towards a stratified, commercialised system that reproduces and deepens existing inequalities. The goal of inclusive knowledge production, vital for a democratic and diverse nation like India, hangs in the balance. The passage of this Bill may well determine whether higher education remains a public good or becomes a privatised commodity.
Kanchan teaches at Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi. Thakur teaches at Department of Economics, Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, University of Delhi
