-
CENTRES
Progammes & Centres
Location
VBSA 2025 seeks to unify regulation while balancing autonomy, federalism, and institutional capacity
The regulatory regime governing Indian higher education for many decades has been characterised by prescriptive and compliance-oriented norms, including fixed faculty-student ratios, inspection-driven approvals, and extensive paperwork. In practice, this has infused compliance over quality and conformity over collaboration, undermining institutional innovation and real autonomy.
National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasised an alternative “light but tight” regulatory approach, primarily driven by the principles of integrity and transparency through audit and public disclosure, while promoting innovation through autonomy and good governance.
The regulatory reset has now moved into a legislative phase with the introduction of the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill, 2025, on 15 December 2025. It is, therefore, pertinent to examine what remains unresolved and what will determine whether it can enable quality and autonomy.
The VBSA Bill establishes the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA), supported by three Councils: the Regulatory Council, which serves as a common regulator; the Accreditation Council, responsible for overseeing accreditation processes; and the Standards Council, tasked with maintaining academic standards.
The three-council model consolidates regulatory functions while maintaining internal specialisation, aiming to reduce overlap and preserve functional differentiation across regulation, accreditation, and standards.
The VBSA Bill incorporates several consequential design features. First, the three-council model consolidates regulatory functions while maintaining internal specialisation, aiming to reduce overlap and preserve functional differentiation across regulation, accreditation, and standards.
Second, it provides strategic direction without a grant mandate to higher education institutions. The commission and councils are not intended to function asUGC-style entities; the commission serves primarily as a systems-setter and supports the councils in their operations. Their segregation can minimise conflicts of interest but places the onus on the broader financing ecosystem—both the Centre and the states— to ensure that funds are allocated in ways that achieve quality outcomes.
Third, the Bill strengthens enforcement by specifying penalties for violations, in which it lays down an adjudicatory mechanism for the determination of penalties; it also prescribes a significant deterrent for setting up the institution without approval.
The strongest argument to revisit the framework with an emphasis on a single-regulatory system is straightforward—India needs portable academic standards and credible quality assurance across states. Currently, there are multiple regulators with overlapping norms that have historically created a compliance burden and inconsistent quality signals. VBSA-2025 seeks to replace three legacy regulators—the UGC (1956), AICTE (1987), and NCTE (1993) (excluding legal and medical education)—and establish a unified institutional architecture for regulating higher education. A single regulatory umbrella, if implemented effectively, can support national priorities by fostering a multidisciplinary approach, ensuring comparable credentials, enabling student mobility within and across institutions and enhancing international credibility.
There are multiple regulators with overlapping norms that have historically created a compliance burden and inconsistent quality signals.
This is not just a matter of policy preference; it is a significant issue for the nation. Indian higher education continues to be organisationally fragmented due to the differing agendas of the state and the typology of institutions. The NEP 2020 is steering towards a common ‘mobility logic’ by encompassing portable credits and qualifications via instruments such as the Academic Bank of Credits (ABC) and the National Higher Education Qualifications Framework (NHEQF). In this context, a single regulator looks to be a logical “system design” solution.
The other side of the coin is equally persuasive. State universities serve a large proportion of the students in the country, are sustained by state budgets, and are integrated with the local development needs, including teacher training, public health, local governance, and language preservation. This type of Union-centric regulatory design can undermine state-level democratic accountability and remove states from shaping higher education to the social and economic priorities of the citizens.
VBSA’s architecture— anchored in a Commission and three Councils covering regulation, accreditation, and standards— will inevitably shape how far state systems feel like co-authors rather than subjects of reform. The most sensitive test here is not the declared intent but the operating reality: who sets standards, who adjudicates disputes, and who controls the levers that affect institutional survival—including permissions, penalties, autonomy status, and closures.
VBSA contains features that can be read in two directions—toward cooperative federalism or toward centralised command. The Bill provides for state participation through rotational nominees in key councils, a meaningful acknowledgement that higher education reform cannot be implemented without states. However, representation does not automatically translate into power-sharing unless. Its significance will depend on whether states exercise a substantive role in rulemaking, whether transition pathways are negotiated rather than imposed, and whether state systems can meaningfully influence the sequencing and capacity-building demands of implementation.
Further, the VBSA provides for appeals, where certain decisions can be appealed before the Central Government, a provision that is politically salient in a federal context. Even if designed as an administrative remedy, it may be interpreted by the states and the state universities as tantamount to Union finality on critical issues, such as changes in autonomy, sanctions, and closures. Trust in the regulatory system may erode k
Strong deterrence can protect students and public interest, particularly against low-quality providers.
The VBSA strengthens enforcement through penalties and adjudicatory provisions. Strong deterrence can protect students and public interest, particularly against low-quality providers. Strict enforcement in the federal system, however, without adequate capacity support, can disproportionately affect weaker institutions, many of which are in state systems with constrained finances. The political economy risk is that central enforcement rises while state capacity and funding do not.
The VBSA’s approach moves away from the earlier expectation that the regulator is a major channel of grants. While this can reduce conflicts of interest, it heightens the need for centre-state coordination. For instance, it remains unclear how state financing and national quality expectations will be aligned. If regulation and financing are not harmonised, states may perceive VBSA as setting standards without enabling the conditions to meet them.
If VBSA is to avoid becoming a symbol of centralism, implementation should explicitly build a cooperative federal compact. Here are five steps that can help make a difference:
The VBSA Bill could either become the institutional backbone of NEP’s trust-based promise or be perceived as a body consolidating authority under a new label. The centralism-federalism debate will not be resolved by institutional diagrams; it will depend on how the Bill is operationalised, especially for state universities.
The centralism-federalism debate will not be resolved by institutional diagrams; it will depend on how the Bill is operationalised, especially for state universities.
If VBSA builds a cooperative federal compact—combining standards with consultation, enforcement with due process, and autonomy with capacity—India can truly move towards a system that is “light but tight”, where regulation is lean yet rigorous. In the absence of such measures, the risk is a familiar cycle: greater central oversight, heavier compliance, and continued constraints on innovation in precisely those institutions that educate the majority of the students.
Prof. (Dr.) Chetan Singai, Professor and Dean at the School of Law, Governance and Public Policy, Chanakya University, Bengaluru
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Chetan Singai is Professor and Dean, School of Law, Governance and Public Policy, Chanakya University, Bengaluru. ...
Read More +
PREV
