Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan (VBSA) Bill 2025 – Provisions, Significance & Challenges – Explained Pointwise

The Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhishthan Bill, 2025, which seeks to overhaul the regulation of higher education in India, was referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) earlier this week for deliberation after its introduction in the Lok Sabha. The Bill aims to create a single apex body that replaces UGC, AICTE & NCTE, and aligns the system with NEP 2020.
The Bill will apply to HEIs, including Institutions of National Importance (INIs), such as IITs, IIMs, NITs, IISERs, Central & State Universities , as well as Deemed-to-be-Universities. However, the Bill will not apply to medical, legal, pharmaceutical, dental & veterinary institutions.

What are some of the important provisions of the VBSA Bill?

What is the significance of the VBSA Bill?

1. Employability of Graduates: For years, the Indian Higher Education System has been criticized for producing unemployable graduates. The VBSA Bill is significant because it legally mandates shift towards competency-based education:

   1. Skill-Centricity: By making internships a degree requirement, it forces the academic system to align with the real-time needs of the global labor market.

   2. The Professor of Practice: This breaks the academic “ivory tower” by allowing industry veterans to teach, ensuring that classroom theory is grounded in current industrial reality.

2. Reversing ‘Brain Drain’ to ‘Brain Gain’: The Bill addresses the massive outflow of Indian students & capital to foreign universities:

   1. International Hub: By allowing top global universities to set up their campus in India, it democratizes access to “world-class” education for students who cannot afford to travel abroad.

   2. Global Portability: The National Academic Credit Bank makes Indian credits globally recognizable, facilitating easier exchange and high-level research collaborations.

3. Structural Economic Transformation: The Bill acts as an economic instrument rather than just a social one:

   1. Demographic Dividend: With India having the world’s largest youth population, the Bill provides the legal framework to convert this population into a skilled workforce before the “aging window” begins in the 2040s.

   2. Performance-Linked Funding: By tying government grants to research and employability, it introduces a “competitive federalism” in education, forcing institutions to innovate or face budget cuts.

4. Rural-Urban Divide: The VBSA Bill is significant in its attempt to bridge:

   1. Linguistic Liberation: By mandating technical education in local languages, it ensures that a student’s mastery of English is no longer a barrier to becoming an engineer or a doctor.

   2. AI-Democratization: The use of the NETF (National Educational Technology Forum) aims to provide rural students with the same quality of AI-driven tutoring as their urban counterparts.

5. Single Higher Education Regulator: It operationalises NEP’s “single regulator” idea by replacing fragmented bodies (UGC, AICTE, NCTE) with VBSA, enabling a “light but tight” framework that cuts red tape while enforcing quality and outcomes.

What are some of the criticisms of the VBSA Bill?

1. Erosion of Federalism: Education is a Concurrent list subject, however, the VBSA Bill erodes the State autonomy by:

   1. Centralization of Power: The Bill creates a “super-regulator” (VBSA) that overrides state-level education boards. This centralizes decision-making in Centre, potentially ignoring the unique linguistic and cultural needs of diverse states.

   2. State Financial Burden: The Bill mandates expensive technological upgrades and infrastructure changes, but many state governments argue the Centre has not provided a clear roadmap for funding these requirements at the state university level.

2. Commercialization of Higher Education: By allowing foreign universities to repatriate the profit & by encouraging ‘Professors of Practice’ role from the Corporate world, the VBSA Bill is criticized for promoting privatization of knowledge:

   1. Research vs. Profit: There is concern that research will shift only toward “profitable” science and technology, neglecting the Humanities and Social Sciences, which are essential for a healthy democracy but often yield lower immediate commercial returns.

   2. Job Security for Faculty: The push for contractual and industry-based hiring (Professors of Practice) is seen by some academic unions as an attempt to undermine the permanent tenure system and traditional academic research.

3. Threats to Academic Freedom: The Bill introduces rigorous ‘National Standards’ for curriculum & performance:

   1. Ideological Homogenization: A centralized curriculum could be used to push a specific ideological narrative, limiting the scope for critical thinking and dissent in university spaces.

   2. Surveillance through Data: The mandatory “Academic Bank of Credits” and digital IDs are viewed by privacy advocates as tools for the state to track the intellectual trajectory and political leanings of students throughout their careers.

4. Digital Divide: The VBSA Bill leans heavily on AI-driven learning & digital credits:

   1. Infrastructure Gaps: In rural India, where internet penetration is inconsistent and electricity is not always reliable, a heavy reliance on digital education could further marginalize underprivileged students.

   2. Cost of Implementation: The move toward “market-linked” education and the entry of foreign universities raise fears of a “two-tier” system: high-quality, expensive private/foreign education for the elite, and underfunded, struggling public institutions for the masses.

5. Practicality of “Apprenticeship Mandate”:

   1. While the Bill mandates internships for all degrees, skeptics question the capacity of Indian industry to absorb millions of students every year.

   2. Most of India’s businesses are micro-enterprises that do not have the administrative capacity to manage structured internship programs, potentially leading to “fake” certificates and a “paper-only” compliance culture.

6. Funding De-linkage: Removing grant-disbursal powers from VBSA and placing them directly under the Ministry of Education risks arbitrary, politically influenced funding, turning public universities into compliance tools rather than autonomous institutions.
7. Inequalities due to Graded Autonomy: Graded autonomy sounds progressive but could widen inequalities, favouring elite central institutions while marginalising rural/minority-serving ones through performance-linked funding and accreditation pressures.