Experts warn VBSA Bill could marginalise regional varsities

NEW new delhi: training experts and academics feature warned that the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) banknote, 2025 could change funding inequities among higher education institutions and push them to prioritise centrally aligned curricula , pointing out that the legislation proposes grants disbursal “through mechanisms devised by the ministry of education” with funding decisions guided by the VBSA regulatory council’s “feedback on institutional performance.”The VBSA Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 15 and referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee a day later, seeks to replace the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE). It provides for the repeal of the UGC Act, 1956, the AICTE Act, 1987 and the NCTE Act, 1993, and the dissolution of these bodies.The proposed 12-member VBSA commission will coordinate the functioning of three councils : the Regulatory Council (Viksit Bharat Shiksha Viniyaman Parishad); the Standards Council (Viksit Bharat Shiksha Manak Parishad); and the Accreditation Council (Viksit Bharat Shiksha Gunvatta Parishad). The first will authorise institutions to award degrees, the second, define learning outcomes and faculty qualifications, and the third, design and oversee the accreditation framework.Unlike the UGC, the new regulator will not have a dedicated funding arm, even though the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisaged a separate grants council under the new regulatory framework. The bill also does not empower the regulatory council to fix fees, limiting it instead to framing a policy to “prevent commercialisation of higher education.”Under the new bill, all higher education institutions — except medical, legal, dental, pharmaceutical and veterinary institutions — will come under the VBSA commission.Academics argue that this structural shift, where funding decisions are guided by regulatory feedback, could make universities risk-averse and disproportionately penalise institutions in rural and underserved regions. Though the VBSA does not explicitly mandate a centralised curriculum, experts say incentive-driven accreditation is likely to nudge institutions towards standardised, template-based teaching aligned with national models rather than locally grounded or innovative curricula.“Accreditation, ratings and rankings measure outputs and adherence to regulations and proxies for capacity: faculty strength, research publications, student-faculty ratios, digital systems, governance processes, internationalisation. These are not neutral indicators. They reflect accumulated advantages. When funding follows regulatory feedback, weaker universities, especially in rural areas, risk being penalised for structural constraints, encouraging optics-driven compliance over real capacity-building and reproducing inequality rather than correcting it,” said Anurag Shukla, an education expert who teaches across universities including the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.Former UGC chairperson Sukhadeo Thorat said that during his tenure between 2006 and 2011, the commission introduced several schemes to support universities located in rural areas, which typically suffer from shortages of human capital and infrastructure.“The VBSA funding mechanism will result in disparity among institutions; well-developed universities will get more funding as they will be able to meet the regulatory requirements but institutions in rural and small-town which need special support will not get enough funding and continue to lag behind,” he added.The proposed changes come at a time when the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) loans, which were introduced as a supplementary financing mechanism in 2017, have increasingly replaced direct grants. As of December 2024, HEFA had sanctioned loans worth ₹43,028.24 crore but disbursed only ₹21,590.58 crore. A National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP) review of HEFA loans between July 2022 and January 2023 found that, on average, 78% of the internal revenue of institutions that took HEFA loans came from student fees. The report also noted that the education ministry had asked some institutions to “raise their fees to repay the loans.”Funding to technical education has also declined sharply. Central government grants to AICTE dropped from ₹420 crore in 2022-23 to ₹137.5 crore in 2024–25 — a fall of 67% in two years, according to data shared with the Rajya Sabha. AICTE’s expenditure on student scholarships declined from ₹344.81 crore in 2022–23 to ₹309.48 crore in 2024–25.State universities, which depend heavily on public funding, fear that the new system will further marginalise them. Currently, UGC provides financial assistance to eligible state universities under Section 12(B) of the UGC Act. In addition, the Ministry of Education runs the Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (PM-USHA) scheme to support NEP reforms in state institutions, with an outlay of ₹12,926.10 crore for 2023-26. However, actual expenditure in 2024-25 was about 51% lower than the budgeted allocation. In Parliament, the ministry has said that “any extension or next phase of the scheme is contingent upon several factors.”Sanjay Chaudhary, a faculty member at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, said funding constraints already severely limit state universities. “We receive very little funding from UGC and the state government. Even salaries of teachers are dependent upon funds collected through alumni cell and industry collaborations. Now, the education ministry is saying that funding will depend upon feedback from the regulatory council of VBSA. Universities like ours will not get good feedback from them because we don’t have proper resources and infrastructure to meet the requirements,” he said.Shukla warned that the bill could lead to a tiered public university system, with well-capitalised central institutions at one end and fiscally weak state universities at the other.Education ministry officials and private university leaders, however, defended the proposed framework. An education ministry official said the grants disbursal process would be “similar to or better than the existing mechanisms,” adding that “the feedback of the Regulatory Council on the institutional performance shall be the major factor to decide the quantum of funds… to ensure transparency and public accountability.”Prof R.B. Jadeja, Provost of Marwadi University, Rajkot, said the VBSA framework rewards institutions that are research-ready and well-accredited.Vineet Joshi, Secretary in the Department of Higher Education, said VBSA would decentralise authority rather than centralise it. “It is the institution that declares the correct data and moves forward on that basis,” he said at the HT Future-Ed Conclave on December 19, adding that institutional autonomy would be linked to performance, particularly student outcomes.IIT Kharagpur Director Prof Suman Chakraborty welcomed the move to bring IITs under the new umbrella regulator, arguing that premier institutions should not remain exempt. On funding concerns, he said “older IITs were unlikely to rely excessively on HEFA loans or raise fees, instead using a mix of government support, loans and endowments.”