New Delhi — A high-level committee set up to reform the regulation of India’s heavily bureaucratic higher-education system said in its final report that universities should be self-regulatory bodies, The Times of India reported today.

The report, presented to the ministry in charge of higher education by the 27-member committee, also said that undergraduate programs should be restructured to allow mobility between universities. In addition, the committee recommended that a single accreditation process replace the current plethora of regulatory agencies.

The committee said that India’s private and public higher-education system neither “excites students” nor “equips graduates for the real world.”

The effect of the recommendations remains to be seen. The education ministry had already paved the way to ignore them when — having got word of harsh criticism in the final report — it changed the committee’s name last month to make it an advisory body rather than a review committee, The Telegraph reported then.

The committee has criticized the country’s higher-education ministry for its “nervous and hurried response in starting new central universities” and for its “intrusive bureaucracy and mindless regulation.”

Last month the ministry rejected as unnecessary higher-education reforms recommended by the high-level National Knowledge Commission set up by the prime minister. —Shailaja Neelakantan