How Regulation Stifles HEIs: The VBSA Bill and Autonomy

Source: Original editorial ↗ The Hindu

The Lift Line

“If intensive regulatory mechanisms were the real engine of quality, our most tightly regulated universities and HEIs would have been outperforming the IISc, IITs, IIMs NITs and other similar institutions.”

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

Amruth G. Kumar, Professor at the School of Education, Central University of Kerala, writes in The Hindu of 5 October 2026 on the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, 2025. The Bill has been before Parliament since 2025: it was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 15 December 2025 and referred the next day to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) of 31 members chaired by Daggubati Purandeswari, which is still examining it. The article is a ready source for any answer on regulation versus autonomy in higher education, a theme of NEP 2020 and of GS2’s social-sector syllabus. For the Bill’s structure, see our explainer on the VBSA Bill.

GS Paper 2: Issues relating to development and management of the social sector and services relating to education; statutory, regulatory and quasi-judicial bodies.

Background and Context

Today’s regulators and what the VBSA proposes.

Body	Basis	Under the VBSA Bill
UGC	UGC Act, 1956	Replaced
AICTE	AICTE Act, 1987	Replaced
NCTE	NCTE Act, 1993	Replaced
NAAC	Autonomous body set up by the UGC (1994)	Accreditation function moves to the accreditation council
VBSA (proposed)	VBSA Bill, 2025	Apex body with three councils: Viniyaman (regulation), Gunvatta (accreditation), Manak (standards)

The constitutional base. Entry 66 of the Union List lets Parliament coordinate and determine standards in higher education; Entry 25 of the Concurrent List covers education generally. NEP 2020 proposed a single Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) with separate verticals; the VBSA Bill is its legislative form.

The outliers. IITs, NITs, IISERs and IIMs are governed by their own Acts as Institutes of National Importance; the IISc is a deemed university with an Institution of Eminence tag. The writer groups them as institutions outside the regulatory architecture that binds other HEIs.

The Analysis

1. The problem is “governmentality”, not regulation as such. When external supervision substitutes for internal integrity, institutions ask what minimum must be shown on paper, not what is right.

2. Fear corrupts the purpose. Quoting Alan Greenspan’s observation that regulation built on force and fear ignores the moral base of society, the writer says institutions now optimise for the regulator. Teachers document evidence for annual self-assessment reports; authorities care about ranking and accreditation scores, not about how a teacher builds a student’s engagement.

3. The “paper blizzard”. The outcome is an evidence blizzard of digital documents, with classrooms where intellectual engagement “lies dormant”.

4. Inconsistent rules. Circulars and guidelines from the UGC, AICTE, NAAC and NCTE clash and need clarifications. UGC Regulations, 2018 expect a 40-hour working week but only five hours a day of physical presence, reducing intellectual work to arithmetic.

5. Risk aversion. An assembly-line model of work and panoptic surveillance create a trust deficit; innovation is stifled and “conventional mediocrity becomes the safest available option”.

6. The natural experiment. Institutions outside the architecture set their own curricula, recruitment and spending, and they outperform the tightly regulated rest. Bringing them under the VBSA, the writer warns, would invite “another casualty”.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

Regulators:

• UGC Act, 1956; AICTE Act, 1987; NCTE Act, 1993; NAAC set up by the UGC in 1994.
• VBSA Bill, 2025: introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2025; JPC of 31 members (21 Lok Sabha, 10 Rajya Sabha), chair Daggubati Purandeswari.
• VBSA councils: Viniyaman (regulatory), Gunvatta (accreditation), Manak (standards).

Constitution and policy:

• Union List Entry 66: coordination and standards in higher education; Concurrent List Entry 25: education.
• NEP 2020: single HECI with four verticals (regulation, accreditation, funding, standards).

From the article:

• UGC Regulations, 2018: 40-hour week; five hours a day on campus.

⚠️ Watch the trap: NEP 2020’s HECI had four verticals, including a funding body; the VBSA Bill sets up three councils, and grant-giving is not one of them. Do not carry the four-vertical design into questions on the Bill.

The Debate

For the writer’s view. Compliance regimes reward documentation over teaching and punish risk; the strongest Indian institutions are the least micro-regulated, which suggests autonomy, not inspection, drives quality.

The other side. Without standards, many private and affiliating colleges have run as degree mills with fake faculty and poor facilities; the elite institutes are richly funded and highly selective, so their success is not only about freedom; and a single regulator replacing three could cut, not add, paperwork.

The balanced verdict. Set a firm floor of verified minimum standards, then grant autonomy that grows with accreditation and outcomes, judged by peers rather than by document counts.

How to Think About This

Measure outcomes, not inputs. A regulator that counts files, hours and forms gets files, hours and forms. In answers on any regulator, education, health or telecom, ask what it measures. Outcome-based regulation with graded autonomy is the standard reform answer, and this article gives you the education example.

Diagram-in-Words

Takeaway Box

• Thesis: compliance-heavy regulation makes HEIs optimise for inspectors, not learning.
• Example: UGC Regulations 2018, 40-hour week versus five hours a day on campus.
• Evidence: IITs, IIMs, NITs, IISERs and IISc outperform with more autonomy, the writer says.
• Bill: VBSA Bill 2025, three councils, in a JPC since 16 December 2025.

Sources: The Hindu, PRS Legislative Research, VBSA Bill, UGC Regulations, 2018, Ministry of Education, NEP 2020

Source: How Regulation Stifles HEIs: The VBSA Bill and Autonomy — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis

Key Arguments at a Glance

Amruth G. Kumar argues that when external supervision replaces internal integrity, higher educational institutions stop asking what is right and start asking what minimum must be shown on paper; before the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill creates another overarching regulator, Parliament should ask whether regulation threatens the quality it claims to protect.

✓ Supporting

• Fear of the regulator makes institutions optimise teaching for inspection: faculty document evidence for self-assessment reports, administrators chase ranking and accreditation scores, and the result is a “paper blizzard” of digital documents.
• Regulations from the UGC, AICTE, NAAC and NCTE are often inconsistent; UGC Regulations, 2018 expect a 40-hour working week but require only five hours a day of physical presence on campus, turning intellectual work into arithmetic.
• Surveillance-style regulation breeds a trust deficit and risk aversion, so conventional mediocrity becomes the safest option.
• The IISc, IITs, IIMs, NITs and IISERs work outside the architecture that governs other HEIs, set their own curricula, recruitment and spending, and outperform the most tightly regulated universities; bringing them under the VBSA could make them the next casualty.

⚠ Counter

A wider view, not in the article: many Indian institutions, especially private and affiliating colleges, have used autonomy badly, with fake faculty, poor infrastructure and degree mills, which is why minimum standards and accreditation exist; the elite institutes are well funded and selective, so their success may owe as much to resources as to freedom; and the VBSA is meant to replace three overlapping regulators with one, which could reduce paperwork rather than add to it.

→ Way Forward

The writer wants the VBSA tested by whether it makes HEIs bolder hubs of teaching and inquiry rather than better at updating inspection portals. Ujiyari’s synthesis: regulate lightly but firmly, with a few outcome-based mandatory disclosures, graded autonomy that grows with accreditation, peer review over document audits, and no extension of the regime to institutes that already perform without it.