Indian Higher Education at the Crossroads (2025–26)

Between reform momentum, trust deficit, and the race to stay relevant

As 2025 closes, Indian higher education looks bigger than ever—andmore uneasy than ever. Participation is rising, aspirations are rising faster, and the everyday “rules of the game” feel less predictable to students, teachers, and institutions. The system is being pushed to do several difficult things at once: redesign its regulatory architecture, restore confidence in accreditation after a credibility shock, respond to a jobs market being reshaped by AI, and compete globally for learners and faculty—while also navigating the hard realities of India’s federal politics.

What made the year feel different is that the big headlines were not about shiny new campuses or fashionable programmes. They were about governance and trust: a proposed super-regulator, new norms that could normalise contract teaching, an accreditation scandal that forced a pause and rule changes, and an internationalisation push that is ambitious in intent but still thin in early enrolment outcomes.

Scale is real. So is the anxiety about outcomes.

India’s higher education system is now among the world’s largest—and its scale is no longer the debate. The question that is getting sharper is what this scale delivers: do graduates leave with learning and credentials that translate into mobility—jobs, entrepreneurship, research pathways,

or global opportunities—or do they leave with degrees that the market increasingly discounts unless backed by demonstrable skills?

A key tension shows up in mobility numbers. Foreign students in India remain modest, while Indian students going abroad have surged—turning “internationalisation” from a branding phrase into a competitiveness test. The document notes AISHE 2021–22 foreign- student enrolment at 46,878, and cites a policy brief that places Indian outbound mobility at over 13 lakh in 2024—an asymmetry that is hard to ignore.

This is not only about “brain drain.” It is also about the credibility of the Indian campus experience for an international learner: predictable administration, clear degree equivalence, housing and safety, academic support, and a visible route to employability. If those elements feel uncertain, permissions and MoUs alone do not convert into inbound demand.

Consider a simple, familiar campus example. A student in a tier-2 city may now access more courses than before—minors, skill modules, even micro-credentials—but still struggle to find a good lab, a stable mentor, or an internship pipeline. The system expands choice, but the student’s question stays stubbornly practical: “Will this degree move me forward?”

The biggest move of 2025: rewiring the regulator

The most consequential policy story—because it could shape the next decade—was the introduction of the Viksit Bharat Shiksha Adhisthan Bill, 2025 in Parliament on December 15, 2025. As summarised in the document, the proposed body is designed to replace UGC, AICTE, and NCTE, while excluding legal and medical education from its scope.

The political economy around the bill is as important as its administrative logic. The document points to the bill being sent for Joint Parliamentary Committee consideration, expected to deliberate until end-February 2026, and highlights concerns around centralised appointments and limited representation for states and teachers.

There is an honest argument for simplification: India’s higher education regulation has often been seen as fragmented, compliance-heavy, and duplicative. But the counter-argument is equally structural: a single super-regulator can become a single point of failure, especially in a

federal polity where state universities educate a large share of students and where higher education is politically sensitive.

So the crossroads insight is not merely “reform versus status quo.” It is the difference between smarter regulation and more centralised regulation, and that difference will be determined by the final bill text, rule-making, and whether institutional autonomy becomes substantive rather than procedural.

The faculty question: flexibility or a slide into permanent insecurity?

Even as the system debates architecture, it is wrestling with the labour market of teaching. The document notes that draft UGC regulations removed the cap on contract teachers, and also captures the anxiety this triggers: exploitation risks, normalisation of precarious employment, and the possibility that contractualisation becomes the default staffing model.

Yes, contract hiring can bring speed and flexibility—useful in fast- changing fields and in institutions trying to scale quickly. But the deeper risk is cultural: when teaching becomes a short-term gig, research careers become less attractive, mentoring becomes thinner, and

institutional memory erodes. The classroom may continue, but the university’s core promise—long-term academic community—weakens. In everyday terms, this shows up in small, painful ways. A department runs three new “industry-relevant” courses, but the faculty rotates every semester. Students lose continuity, projects become superficial, and recommendation letters become transactional because no mentor has actually watched a learner grow over time.

When accreditation loses trust, quality becomes everybody’s problem 

If regulation sets the rules, accreditation creates the trust layer that makes those rules meaningful. In early February 2025, that trust took a major hit. The document references a NAAC inspection committee bribery case that led to arrests, a multi-month pause in accreditation, and changes in inspection committee rules, while larger reforms remained pending.

This kind of episode is not a one-off scandal; it is a systemic risk. Once accreditation is perceived as gameable, it distorts everything downstream—student choice, employer confidence, institutional funding logic, and the legitimacy of quality claims. The document frames the core requirement clearly: quality assurance cannot become “more forms”; it

must become more credibility, built through auditability, transparency, and robust conflict-of-interest controls.

A practical analogy helps. If grading in a university is suspected to be manipulable, even honest students suffer because the value of everyone’s marks declines. Accreditation works similarly at the institutional level: once trust falls, even good institutions pay the price.

India’s federal fault line: reform is also negotiation

One policy lesson the year underlined is that education reform in India is never purely a central script. The document points to disputes linked to funding arrangements and prolonged litigation around vice-chancellor appointments in multiple states, creating institutional uncertainty that directly affects campus functioning.

When VC appointments stall, promotions and hiring stalls. When funding is delayed, infrastructure and student support weaken. When calendars slip, credibility suffers. This is not abstract politics; students experience it as delayed exams, missing faculty, and administrative drift. 

Internationalisation: permissions are not the same as Experience 

Internationalisation ran through 2025 as ambition and anxiety. The document notes that letters of intent were issued to foreign universities for campuses in Indian cities, but also flags the “first-batch reality”: the earliest foreign university campuses in GIFT City reportedly admitted only about 60 students in their first cohort.

At the same time, India is also experimenting with “knowledge export,” including an Indian management institution’s overseas campus launch with a small initial cohort—symbolically significant, but still early-stage in scale terms.

The document’s central point is operational and unavoidable: internationalisation will rise only when India fixes the last mile—visa and mobility facilitation, degree equivalence, professional student services, housing, safety, predictable regulation, and employability outcomes. This is where institutions must move from announcements to “international student-ready” systems. An international learner is not only buying a syllabus; they are buying a life setup for two to four years. Any uncertainty—on paperwork, internships, safety, or post-study pathways—reduces demand sharply, regardless of branding. 

NEP at five: momentum on paper, strain on delivery 

By end-2025, NEP 2020 will be completed in five years. The document captures a critical interpretation: monitoring, deregulation, and digitalisation have advanced faster than academic reforms, while flexibility and choice remain constrained by staff shortages and infrastructure limitations, sometimes resulting in poor-quality course experiences. It also cites operational strain in implementing structural reforms like the four-year undergraduate programme, where administrative breakdowns, such as exam-paper delivery failures, became a public lesson in what happens when reform outpaces capacity.

The underlying message is simple: modularity and choice require advising systems, course design capability, assessment readiness, and staffing. Without these, flexibility becomes confusion. 

Professional councils push back, and remain outside the new architecture

A subtle but important detail is what the proposed new framework does not cover. The document notes that legal and medical education remain outside the bill’s scope, reinforcing that India is moving into a hybrid regulatory future rather than a single consolidated logic. It also notes sharper interventions by professional bodies, including a multi-year pause on new law schools and expansion by the Bar Council of India, and standardisation moves in allied health that will affect admissions and curricula. The implication is that coordination—rather than consolidation alone—will determine whether the ecosystem becomes clearer or more contradictory for institutions and learners.

2026: the “crystal gaze” and the hard choices ahead

The document frames three possibilities for 2026: a cleaner governance regime if the bill is redesigned for trust, a credible quality reset if accreditation becomes auditable, and internationalisation at scale if India fixes last-mile delivery rather than relying on permissions alone.

It also lays out three challenges likely to intensify. First, the AI-skills squeeze. The labour market tilt toward skills is already visible, and degrees will increasingly be valued when they come with portfolios, projects, internships, labs, and industry-validated Competence.

Second, the “contract trap.” If contractual faculty expands without safeguards, short-term savings can create long-term losses in pedagogy, mentoring depth, and research culture—exactly when the system needs stronger learning outcomes.

Third, reform fatigue and operational breakdowns. Reforms that change programme structures and assessment models can overwhelm under- resourced administration, unless phased rollouts and capacity-building become the default approach.

The real crossroads: permission-led reform or outcome-led rebuilding

The most compelling framing in the document is that the crossroads is ultimately a choice between two futures: a permission-led future with new regulators and frameworks but weak delivery capacity, and an outcome-led future with fewer headline reforms but deeper investments in trust, teaching careers, student services, and global-grade campus systems.

From that lens, the 2026 agenda becomes clear. Legitimacy must be designed into the new governance framework. Accreditation must become auditable, not just inspectable. Faculty careers must remain careers, not gigs. Internationalisation must be built as student experience, not only announcements. And AI-era curriculum realism must shift classrooms toward projects, internships, micro-credentials, and the ethics of new technologies—so degrees remain economically credible.

If 2025 was the year the pressure points surfaced loudly, 2026 could be the year India decides whether it will treat trust, teaching talent, and student experience as “implementation details,” or finally place them at the centre of reform.

The author is the Chief Mentor of Edinbox and works as a Director with the Techno India group of Kolkata, along with being the Principal Adviser of the Kolkata based university of the group.