The Balancing Act: Policy and Pedagogy in Higher Education
In the classic folktale of Tenali Rama, King Krishnadevaraya attempts to rid his kingdom of rats by decreeing that every household must keep a cat and a cow to provide the cat with milk. The result? The cats, pampered with free dairy, become plump and lazy, ignoring the rats entirely. The mandate was followed perfectly, yet its intended purpose was defeated.
This parable serves as a vital mirror for contemporary Indian higher education. We are often prone to designing elaborate, orderly rules that ensure compliance while ignoring the actual outcomes—the “rats” of academic stagnation and inequitable assessment. As the sector faces a massive expansion, moving toward a 50% Gross Enrolment Ratio by 2035, the tension between bureaucratic regulation and the true spirit of teaching has never been more relevant.
The 2025 Regulations: Autonomy with Teeth
The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) recent “Minimum Standards of Instruction for the Grant of UG and PG Degrees” (2025) represents a shift toward structured flexibility. The regulations move away from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to assessment. Instead of mandating a rigid ratio for internal and end-semester marks, the UGC now requires institutions to establish clear, continuous internal evaluation (CIE) schemes.
Crucially, these regulations impose transparency as a non-negotiable standard. Students are now entitled to see their evaluated answer scripts, and assessment schemes must be declared at the start of the semester, not retroactively. This is “autonomy with teeth”: Delhi provides the framework, but the design is left to the individual university. However, as any seasoned educator knows, autonomy is a double-edged sword. A committee empowered to design its own evaluation could produce either a rigorous, outcome-linked assessment or a superficial, box-ticking exercise.
Beyond the Circular: The Vocational Imperative
A policy can mandate the structure of fairness, but it cannot legislate the spirit of it. This is where the concept of teaching as a “vocation” becomes essential. A job is a task performed and set aside at the end of the day; a vocation is a calling that requires a deeper commitment to the student.
When a teacher views their role as a vocation, they provide meaningful, constructive feedback not because a regulation requires it, but because they value the student’s growth. The history of Eklavya offers a sobering reminder here: a student’s brilliance can be stifled by an exclusionary or poorly governed assessment system. Transparency—the right for a student to view their own script—is the academic republic’s way of ensuring that no student is judged in the dark, effectively preventing the “Eklavya trap” from recurring.
From Compliance to Learning: A Call to Action
For university leaders, the challenge lies in shifting the focus of institutional dashboards. Are we measuring the “milk” (timely submission of marks, attendance logs) or the “rats” (actual learning outcomes, fairness of evaluation)? Compliance is easy to audit; ethics are harder to cultivate. Leadership must protect a teacher’s time, allowing for the unglamorous, high-value work of providing detailed feedback.
The path forward requires a synthesis of both regulation and reason. If you are a student, exercise your right to know the evaluation scheme beforehand and view your scripts. If you are a faculty member, use the 2025 regulations as a shield to innovate, shifting your assessments from rote memorization to skill-based learning. If you are an administrator, move your focus from audit-heavy dashboards to outcome-based quality.
Ultimately, higher education succeeds only when we bridge the gap between the cold, enforceable promise of the rulebook and the warm, personal promise of the teacher. As we navigate the complexities of a growing university landscape, we must constantly ask ourselves: are we merely feeding the cats, or are we truly committed to catching the rats?
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