Editorial: Varsity viceroys

CHENNAI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has always been the most craven of India’s so-called autonomous institutions. In its entire existence, one never heard a whimper of protest from it as the ruling dispensation, whichever it was, rode roughshod over it, and now, with the saffron right in power, it lies supine for a total rollover. Recently, the university regulator was not even given the honour of releasing its own draft regulations on academic appointments. The Draft UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education) Regulations, 2025, were released by the Union Ministry of Education instead, leaving the commission not even a shred of autonomy to cover its embarrassment.

The draft regulations themselves leave no one in doubt as to their purport. They are the final move in the nationalist strategy of ‘besiege, infiltrate and capture’ of India’s higher education. The sweeping changes proposed will enable the Union government to seize control of the whole process of recruitment and promotion of faculty and appointment of vice-chancellors.

The selection committee for teaching appointments will consist of three members: A nominee of the Chancellor (who is, by ex-officio norms, the Centre-appointed governor of a state), a UGC nominee, and a representative from the university’s own governing body. With no role given to the state government, it’s obvious that New Delhi wants the cake all to itself. Further, the new regulations introduce subjective criteria for the selection and promotion of faculty, which makes room for bias. India’s varsity ecosystem is a vast job market that is ideal to accommodate party loyalists and cadres and is crucial to capture the thought agenda of this nation for generations to come. India has over 1,200 universities, including central, state, deemed, and private institutions, plus more than 45,000 colleges. Per the All-India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE), there are more than 1.5 million faculty positions in addition to non-teaching jobs. The new appointment and promotion norms amount to an opening of the floodgates to a ‘conservative’ recalibration of higher education in India.

The draft regulations relating to appointment of vice-chancellors are equally alarming. It is proposed that a search-cum-selection committee will be appointed solely by the Chancellor, with no representation from state government. This is a curtailment of the state’s role in higher education despite it being a subject in the Concurrent List of the Constitution. Given the tensions between governors and state governments in opposition-ruled states, including Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Kerala and Karnataka, it allows the Centre to make another influential office serve ruling party interests and weaponise the university ecosystem against the state government.

Several new proposals are designed to pave the way for further privatisation and commercialisation of higher education. VCs can be appointed from outside academia, which would open the doors to the regime’s favourites from business, consultancy and think tanks regardless of academic creds. Nine new norms have been prescribed for appointment to faculty, aimed at favouring candidates with business experience more than academic achievement and teaching experience. In sum, the UGC’s new regulations serve, at one stroke, as the wedge of saffronisation and Americanisation of India’s academe.