The Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Bill to set up a single higher education regulator will be introduced in Parliament soon but medical and law colleges will not be brought under its ambit, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said.

In an interview with PTI, Pradhan said the HECI will have three major roles which are regulation, accreditation and setting professional standards.

Funding, which is seen as the fourth vertical, will not be under the HECI and the autonomy for funding will stay with the administrative ministry, he said.

"We will bring the HECI bill in Parliament soon...after that also there will be standing committee scrutiny but we have started comprehensive work for everything. There are three major verticals. First is regulatory role, which UGC (University Grants Commission) does...it has already started lot of internal reforms at its level," Pradhan said.

"Second is accreditation at two levels...accreditation of colleges, and accreditation of programmes and courses. We had set up a committee under Dr Radhakrishnan for revamping the NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), it has also made recommendations. Third is setting professional standards about what will be taught and how it will be taught," he said.

The education and skill development minister, however, clarified that funding will not be part of the single-window regulator. "Funding will not go to the single-window (regulator)...the funding autonomy will stay with the administrative ministry like health ministry, agriculture, science and technology or our ministry," he said.

Pradhan said that "except for medical and law colleges, all colleges will brought under the purview of the HECI".

The HECI, which was proposed in the new National Education Policy (NEP), looks to replace the UGC, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE).

While the UGC oversees non-technical higher education, the AICTE oversees technical education and the NCTE is the regulatory body for teachers' education.

The concept of HECI has been discussed before in the form of a draft bill.

The draft Higher Education Commission of India (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act) Bill, 2018, which seeks to repeal the UGC Act and provides for setting up of the Higher Education Commission of India, was put in the public domain in 2018 for feedback and consultation with stakeholders.

Renewed efforts to make the HECI a reality were then initiated under Pradhan, who took over as Union education minister in July 2021.

Underlining the relevance of a single higher education regulator, the NEP-2020 document says, "the regulatory system is in need of a complete overhaul in order to re-energise the higher education sector and enable it to thrive".

It further adds that the new system should ensure that the distinct functions of regulation, accreditation, funding, and academic standard setting are performed by distinct, independent, and empowered bodies.

According to the draft bill, the commission shall have the power to grant authorisation for starting of academic operations on the basis of their compliance with norms of academic quality.

It will also have the powers to revoke authorisation granting to a higher education institution where there is a case of wilful or continuous default in compliance with the norms or regulations.

"The bill also provides for the penal provisions, which albeit graded in nature, will cover withdrawal of power to grant degrees and diplomas or direction to cease academic operations and in cases of wilful non-compliance, may result in prosecution sanction as per the Criminal Procedure Code with a punishment of imprisonment for a term which may extend up to three years," the draft bill stated.

"The commission will also specify norms and processes for fixing of fee chargeable by higher education institutions and advice the central government or the state governments, as the case may be, regarding steps to be taken for making education affordable to all," it stated.

The commission will monitor, through a national database, all matters covering the development of emerging fields of knowledge and balanced growth of higher education institutions in all spheres and specially in promotion of academic quality in higher education, the draft bill stated.

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