While the government claims that autonomy gives greater academic freedom and allows universities to innovate, students and teachers argue that the Graded Autonomy Regulation ensures disproportionate financial and managerial powers to managing trusts and university administrations to cut costs, raise student fees, and start courses in the self-financing mode. This NITI Aayog-prompted policy is a decisive move towards the privatisation of higher education, and will mean the exclusion of economically and socially disadvantaged sections.
