HECI Needs To Adopt A Different Approach To Revolutionize The Education Eco-System

Since the time the HRD Ministry has proposed the repeal of UGC and bring in another regulatory body namely HECI – Higher Education Council of India, many arguments have been doing the round in the Educational corridors on the merit/demerit of this change.

First and foremost, let’s understand how the two entities are different from each other. While UGC’s primary mandates were to provide Grants to central institutions and define & maintain standards of teaching, examination, and research, the proposed HECI is expected to specify standards for grant of authorization for starting its operations. Operationally, the HECI will be a lot more empowered to set and monitor high standards of education and penalize or even shut down the institution if they do not comply with the standards prescribed. The proposed HECI will have more power to ensure higher quality standards and will look at promoting the autonomy of institutions.  However, autonomy without responsibility and accountability will not serve any purpose. Excellence in academics, research, governance, and finances can only be achieved if autonomy is attached to responsibility and accountability. Also, making institutions autonomous will work only if there is a strong regulatory framework supporting it.

The interesting and most relevant change for the youth of our country is the fact that HECI is expected to bring in newer forms of learning, specify learning outcomes, define standards right from curriculum and content development to defining knowledge and skill outcomes for each of the programs. While this could lead to absolute micromanagement of the universities, it could also become another avenue for regulators to increase their power.

The HECI should look at focusing on creating a framework that not only defines and monitors standards but also gives flexibility to the institutes to create and upgrade curriculum as per industry needs, integrate learning with Online and On-the-Job skill programs to make more students Employable, provide Life Skills along with all programs and also provide multi-faceted learning mechanisms and placement linkages.

The proposed HECI is expected to recommend faculty-centric governance for institutions. Universities should have the responsibility, ownership, and flexibility to build their own governance structures. HECI can develop a framework, but should not micromanage universities on such aspects.

Another area that HECI is supposed to work on is specifying norms and fee structure for institutes. Again, recommending a framework is ideal, they should be allowed to define the bare minimum and maximum fees. Like in all cases, the markets should drive these factors and autonomous institutions should have the flexibility to define the curriculum, programs, fees, governance, etc.

Regulations made by HECI should be implemented in a transparent manner, monitor and rank institutes by their performance in areas such as academic excellence, research, industry linkages, and placements.

HECI should become a new entity with well-defined frameworks and outcomes. Only then will it be any different from the current UGC structure. Else, it will defeat the purpose of setting up a new entity.

We need to remember that whatever we do, it should be in the long-term benefit of our eventual stakeholder – the youth of our country. HECI must not just be ‘old wine in a new bottle’.

Neeti Sharma

Guest Author Neeti Sharma is Senior Vice President at Teamlease She leads the Learning Services SBU which includes public-private partnerships with various State & Central Government entities; managing a network of Vocational Skilling Centers pan India. Neeti has over 25 years of diverse experience in Outsourcing, HR, Hybrid Learning, Customer Relationship, Operations and International Business Development. Her current focus is to set up self-sustaining Employability and Employment models with network of centers that profile, assess, train and certify job seekers. Neeti has previously been associated with organizations such as Aptech, Mittal Group of Companies & Goodearth Organics. She holds a Masters degree in Economics & Statistics and a Masters in Marketing Management from Symbiosis Institute of Management.