Marian Pinheiro
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 signalled a long-awaited move away from over-regulation and bureaucratic control toward an autonomy that nurtures innovation, autonomy that protects academic freedom, giving institutions the space to grow into dynamic institutions capable of serving societal needs.
The introduction of the Goa Public Universities Bill, 2025, framed as a step towards realising NEP’s vision, reveals at a closer reading something more troubling. Rather than devolving power to academic institutions, the Bill concentrates it within the State Government, creating an architecture of control that permeates nearly every tier of university functioning.
When Goa’s higher education is already grappling with faculty shortages, limited research output, bureaucratic delays, and dwindling standards, Goa can ill afford to adopt a governance model that weakens universities’ ability to make independent decisions. Autonomy is not a luxury; it is the backbone of healthy academic ecosystems, and Institutions falter when they become extensions of administrative departments.
NEP 2020’s core premise is that good governance must be based on trust, transparency, and accountability—not micromanagement. It calls for a regulatory system where the Government sets broad standards, but individual institutions are free to decide how to achieve them. It repeatedly emphasises, decentralising and freeing academic institutions from the rigid, centralised control that has long hampered the sector’s growth. Indeed, NEP speaks the language of autonomy almost obsessively, declaring it essential for promoting quality, fostering innovation, and ensuring excellence.
Decades of educational research globally, confirm that, when states loosen control and universities gain freedom, academic quality rises. UNESCO, has long stressed that autonomy is a “necessary precondition” for higher education’s proper functioning. Autonomy is not the absence of regulation; rather, it is the space that allows universities to organise curricula, hire faculty, pursue research agendas, develop institutional identities, and respond creatively to societal needs, autonomy is what makes universities, universities.
Yet the Goa Public Universities Bill moves in a direction that significantly restricts this foundational freedom, replacing academic self-governance with a highly centralised framework where the Government’s role dominates nearly all major decision-making processes. The Bill begins by State control from the top down. The Governing Body, is configured to include the Education Secretary, Finance Secretary, and a series of Government-nominated members who collectively outnumber internal academic voices. What should be a forum for institutional strategy becomes, in effect, an extension of the Secretariat.
The Executive Council, government nominees and senior bureaucrats form a voting majority with high-ranking officials from the Higher Education Council, the Higher Education Directorate, and the Technical Education Directorate, among others. Their presence ensures that government perspectives dominate the decision-making process on everything from academic programmes to administrative reforms, embedding bureaucrats directly within core academic bodies is incompatible with the autonomy that NEP envisions.
The Chancellor can demand reports, annul decisions and issue directions initiated or influenced through Government references. More critically, the appointment and removal of the Vice-Chancellor are both subject to prior Government approval. This effectively gives the political executive a direct role in selecting and disciplining the university’s academic head. The Vice-Chancellor, instead of being accountable primarily to the academic community and Governing Body, becomes answerable to the Government.
Such a system risks creating leadership that is cautious and compliant rather than visionary and innovative. The pressure to conform to the expectations of the Government may discourage bold academic initiatives, independent research, or strong institutional reforms. Leadership is central to a university’s success; when the leadership pipeline is politicised or bureaucratised, the institution suffers.
The Bill introduces an overriding clause that allows the Government to issue “uniform statutes” binding on all Public Universities. This power allows the State to dictate internal rules on governance structures, academic programmes, fee structures, service conditions, and curricular frameworks. Instead of fostering experimentation and differentiation—core elements of academic growth—the Bill forces conformity by enabling the Government to impose a one-size-fits-all model. The rich diversity of Goa’s colleges and their unique histories, missions, and communities’ risks being compressed into a homogenised system.
The creation of teaching posts, recruitment of administrative staff, borrowing of funds, and major financial decisions all require Government approval. The Finance Officer is effectively a government representative. Without financial independence, academic decisions are bound to suffer. A university cannot start new programmes, hire faculty, build research labs, or expand services if it is dependent on slow approval cycles. This bottleneck leads to stagnation and discourages investment in long-term academic planning.
The Bill also confers extensive supervisory and coercive powers upon the Government. It can inspect any aspect of university functioning, issue binding directions, and most alarmingly dissolve or take over a university on grounds such as “maladministration” or “economic hardship”. During such take-overs, the Government may even dispose of university assets. These powers are overly broad and susceptible to misuse. They create a climate where universities operate under the constant threat of intervention, making it difficult to plan independently or assert academic priorities.
When such concentrated control is combined, the consequences become even more complicated especially for minority institutions.
The Bill’s cumulative effect is clear, while cloaked in the language of reform, it embodies a governance philosophy rooted in centralisation, not empowerment. It reflects a deep mistrust of institutions and an assumption that control is the primary vehicle for quality assurance. Yet history and global experience both show that the opposite is true. Universities excel when they are trusted, when their leadership has freedom to act, and when academic cultures are allowed to evolve from within.
Fragmentation, uneven quality, limited research output, and insufficient interdisciplinary programmes are real issues in Goa. Many colleges are under-resourced, faculties overstretched, and students underserved. But solving these problems requires strengthening institutions, not weakening them. Reform should aim to create transparent systems of accountability, robust peer review processes, meaningful accreditation outcomes, and empowered academic bodies. It should ensure financial sustainability, promote faculty development, encourage international partnerships, and expand access to research funding. None of these goals are served by increasing bureaucratic oversight.
The Government’s role should be to set a clear vision, provide stable funding, and ensure that institutions meet national and global standards. It should not involve taking over internal governance or reducing universities to administrative units
(The writer is a Professor of Law & an education consultant.)
