The Draft UGC Regulations 2025: A Recipe For Disaster
by Dr Maya JohnRecently, the Union Minister of Education released 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. It seems to be an unprecedented move that a UGC document is released by the Union Ministry of Education (MoE), leading to apprehensions in many quarters that such endeavours smack of a sinister political intervention by the ruling dispensation in the recruitment process and career advancement of teachers. In a context of declining state funding for higher education, the draft also reflects the nefarious attempt to reduce the research agenda of public-funded universities to a subservient position vis-à-vis corporate interests. Further, in the backdrop of the pending 8th pay revision, the draft’s firm assertion that implementation of pay will be as per the 7th pay revision notified in 2016 has given rise to genuine suspicion that the periodic decennial pay revision will be discontinued.