HEERA, Higher Education Empowerment Regulatory Authority is proposed by central government to replace the existing education regulators AICTE and UGC to bring more transparency, autonomy and excellence in technical and non-technical education in India. HEERA proposes to bring the technical and non technical higher education under single roof eliminating the two parallel regulators.
The University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) are soon going to be a thing of the past. The Narendra Modi led- NDA government is all set to reform India’s Education System by scrapping the UGC, AICTE and replace them with a single higher education regulator ‘HEERA’. Government of India proposes to introduce the bill in next session of Parliament in July 2017 to get its nod.
The days will be gone to check whether the institute management programme MBA is approved and recognized by UGC or is the PGDM approved by AICTE. After this new law, you will be need to check the MBA equivalence of your PGDM programme, once it is approved and recognized by ‘HEERA’ the upcoming new higher education regulatory body.
In the month of March 2017 the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi chaired the meeting on education and the decision to launch HEERA was taken. Till the time HEERA is launched, the necessary modification and changes will be brought in the existing rules and regulations of AICTE and UGC.
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The new law is being worked out by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the Niti Aayog. Senior officials said work is currently going on to frame the Heera legislation to eliminate all overlaps in jurisdiction and also do away with regulatory provisions that may no longer be relevant. A committee, comprising Niti Aayog’s Amitabh Kant and higher education secretary KK Sharma among others, is also working on the details.
The Ministry of HRD and Niti Aayog have started preparing a blue print to introduce new single higher education regulator ‘Higher Education Empowerment Regulatory Authority (HEERA)’ to bring transparency and uniformity in the Higher Education and to eliminate the overlapping of juridisction causing delays due to Tug of War between AICTE and UGC.
Objectives of ‘HEERA’
With the launch of HEERA the monopoly and somewhat irrational regulatory regime of UGC and AICTE would be gone. HEERA is proposed to curb irrelevant regulatory provisions. Academicians and experts felt the need for such regulator especially for management education for a long time. It was felt by them that Indian higher education and management education was over regulated and Management education has remained constantly under pressure from various regulators like ACITE.
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- To break the authoritarian regime of UGC and AICTE with single regulator HEERA for technical or non-technical institutions.
- To eliminate the unruly old provisions with implementation of better regulatory provisions.
- HEERA is aimed at achieving the next level of excellence in Indian Education System.
- More autonomy would be available to the B-schools. Experts think that B-schools can remain competitive when they are given more autonomy to differentiate themselves.
- HEERA may provide some breathing space to Indian Higher Education system by bringing about better regulations. In view of academicians, faculty and deans as well as corporate leaders, Indian Higher Education system is poorly managed & badly regulated.
- To take care of earlier anomalies and shortcomings of UGC and AICTE.
- HEERA aims to bring about improved and better quality assessment system and better ranking can be followed.
- Research environment and grant of funds will be easier to allocate for improvement in quality improvement in students, faculty and Institution.
- At present the higher education regulators like AICTE and UGC are stuck in a pre-liberalization era. The approval and regulatory process is based on meeting Infrastructure requirements, and doesn’t measure the quality of the programs. The launch of HEERA is expected to help quality to improve and benefit all stakeholders.
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