Draft UGC Regulations & Guidelines 2025: Lateral entry, Empowering governing authorities, Assault on teachers’ service and working conditions.

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The Draft UGC Regulations 2025, indicatively decoupled from pay revision, aims to align recruitment and promotion rules with NEP-2020. To carry out the task of raising revenue (self-financing), it provides governing authorities of institutions the following powers:

Hire individuals, including those outside the academia (lateral entry), of their choice through diluted recruitment norms and “notable contributions”.
Reward / punish each teacher / academic staff through promotion rules. Apart from teaching and research, to be eligible for promotion, a teacher requires four out 9 listed “notable contributions”
“notable contributions” include: a) securing significant funding for research, infrastructure development, community programmes, start-ups, b) promotion of online mode of education and finding internships for students, c) promoting Indian languages and government-imagined “Indian Knowledge System” and d) innovative teaching.

A PhD degree becomes mandatory for all promotions beyond Level 10 to Level 11. The benefit of counting of ad-hoc services for promotion is threatened.

The insertion of “notable contributions” as a condition for eligibility for recruitment and promotion at levels in Clause 3.8 and subsequent clauses of the Draft undermines teaching and research and prioritises non-academic activities. It gives arbitrary powers to the selection committees and at the same time is a more stringent, horrendous and irrational quantification than the current API based system (See box below for UGC Chairperson’s statements).

The DTF had brought to public notice the IDP adopted by DU. It admits that only 76.6% of its expenditure is funded by the UGC and plans to eventually divest itself from public funding altogether. This Draft should be viewed as part of that step-by-step move to make universities and colleges find financial resources from the market. Raising revenue is proposed to be part of a teacher’s job. Cost cutting involves denial of promotion and other service benefits on this ground.

The UGC Chairperson admits that “notable contributions” will be quantified in the following manner!!
“Higher education must be a transformative force”: UGC Chief on Draft Regulations 2025
https://www.edexlive.com/news/2025/Jan/10/higher-education-must-be-a-transformative-force-ugc-chief-on-controversial-draft-regulations-2025

“The selection committee consists of three subject experts who will use suitable criteria to quantify the “notable contributions,” ensuring that these are inclusive of diverse academic and non-academic pursuits. Out of the nine contributions, applicants must show notable contributions in four areas. They can be evaluated by limiting subjectivity.

Consultancy/sponsored research funding: … a straightforward metric expressed in monetary terms.
Digital content creation for MOOCs: … number of courses/modules created, the number of learners enrolled, and completion rates …
Start-up: …: … registration status, funding amount raised, and proof of successful government, angel, or venture capital funding.
Research or teaching lab development: … number of labs established, the equipment installed, the number of students/researchers using the facilities, or the research output generated.
Student internship/project supervision: … number of students supervised, completed projects, or internships arranged, along with feedback scores or outcomes.
Innovative teaching contribution: … student feedback, the number of innovative practices introduced, their adoption rate, and student outcomes…
Teaching contributions in Indian languages: … number of courses taught in Indian languages, students enrolled, and materials developed.
Teaching-learning and research in the Indian Knowledge System: Measurable aspects could include publications, courses introduced, or research output in this domain.
Community Engagement and Service: Quantifiable aspects include the number of community programmes organised, participation rates, and outcomes achieved.”

UGC Guidelines redfines Workload:

Teachers placed under the mercy of the management, to be deployed for odd jobs 8 hours everyday!

The quotations from the Draft UGC Guidelines 2025 reproduced below make it clear as to why no maximum teaching hours a teacher can be made to undertake is missing in the Draft UGC Regulations 2025. Because there isn’t any stipulated maximum less than 8 hours a day. The management of each institution is to decide the breakup of those hours:

⁠“The time spent by teachers in teaching-learning processes and the time used for research and other academic activities shall be decided by the HEIs…” (4.2)

⁠“ teaching-learning processes include classroom teaching, practical, innovation labs, class projects, assignments, tutorials; sports and games, physical activities, social work, NCC, examinations, assessments; vocational education, training and skilling, project work, field visits, internship, apprenticeship, etc.” (4.1)

⁠“Considering the shifting of focus from classroom education to competency and outcome-based learning, the work commitments of the teachers in full employment should not be less than eight hours per working day.” (4.1)

⁠“ Teachers are required to be present at the workplace of the HEI during working hours.” (4.2)

The Draft Regulations and the Draft Guidelines place the responsibility of meeting the following objectives of NEP-2020 on every teacher: 1) mobilising revenue for HEIs to eventually become self-financing, 2) contributing to online education (the primary instrument for doubling intake into higher education), 3) bearing the burden of finding internship and apprenticeship avenues for students in line with the unthinking obsession to vocationalise all streams of education, and 4) glorifying and instilling pride in whatever the Government wishes to promote as “Indian Knowledge Systems”. The consequences for teaching, learning and research will be devastating.

Recruitment

Subject specialisation to be determined not by the Master’s degree, but by the subject in which the candidate has a PhD or NET. This undermines the academic rigour of Master’s degrees.In the 4th year, the reality will remain that many students will be forced to do coaching for PG entrance exams. They will prefer GEs over DSEs. This will decrease value of their degree.
Scrapping the screening procedure based on academic degrees, teaching experience and research publications and recruitment on the basis of 100% weighting of the judgement of selection committees allow more room for arbitrariness and non-academic considerations.

Counting of Past Service

Teachers of Delhi University have been demanding that past service be counted at all stages of promotion, the Draft restricts countable service to selection made through Selection Committees mandated by the UGC. Ad-hoc teachers in Delhi University have been appointed as per the DU EC Resolution. This threatens the benefit of counting past service even for the first stage of promotion.
While post-doc experience in foreign institutions is counted because of the emoluments received, the experience of those in Indian institutions is not counted because of lack of salary parity. This anomaly needs to be addressed.

Other Issues with Promotion

In place of Screening Committee for the first two stages of promotion, Selection Committee is proposed in the Draft
The requirement for a PhD for promotion to Level 12 is draconian.
Requirement of “notable contributions in four areas out of the nine listed”, which have no direct bearing on teaching and research, will lead to a complete dilution and diversion of teachers’ energies into academically meaningless activities.
The number of publications required for direct recruitment to the post of Associate Professor in the university has been increased from 7 to 8.
The Draft Regulations finally recognise the importance of books and book chapters. However, it remains to be seen whether the University will honour them. After all, the University has already violated the UGC Regulations of 2018 for promotion and recruitment by counting only publications in Scopus or UGC-CARE listed journals.
Promotion to Senior Professor (Level 15) has been limited to 10% of Professors and requires sole supervision of 5 awarded PhDs.
Promotion to Senior Professor should be introduced in colleges.
As opposed to direct recruitment, promotion to Associate Professor additionally requires sole supervision of the awarding of a PhD.

Other Concerns

The DTF-led DUTA had prepared a detailed list of anomalies in the UGC Regulations 2018 that needed to be addressed. The present leadership won elections in 2021 on the promise that the anomalies would be addressed within a few months. Now there is a shroud of silence around these anomalies.
The denial of study leave to Associate Professors is discriminatory.
Lateral entry of non-specialists through Professors of Practice schemes will lead to further dilution of the teaching-learning and research processes.
The cap of 10% on contractual appointments has been removed.
Parity of Librarians and Directors of PE in terms of retirement age.
Promotion scheme for Instructors is missing.
Vice-Chancellors will no longer have to be academics. The proposed composition of the Search Committee for appointment of Vice-Chancellors takes away the autonomy of the institutions. This is precisely why State Governments are unwilling to accept the Draft Regulations.

Friends, the Draft Regulations 2025 in line with the NEP-2020 will have disastrous consequences for higher education in the country. It seems that the government has accepted that the NEP-2020 has led to the deterioration of academic rigour in the curriculum but is unwilling to review the policy direction. The Draft Regulations reinforce the design of forcing educational institutions into self-financing / dependence on the market. Authorities will be empowered to hire, reward and punish individuals of their choice. We must rise as one to defeat this nefarious design to hand over public higher education institutions to the corporate cronies of the ruling dispensation.