The University Grants Commission, which began functioning under an executive order in 1953, enters its Golden Jubilee year on 28 December 2003. From the time the UGC was set up, there has been an exponential growth in the number of higher academic institutions which today employ more than 400,000 teachers with a student body in excess of 9 million. The present chaotic situation is compounded by the recent mushrooming of private educational institutions. This study of the functioning of the UGC and, indirectly, of fifty years of higher education in India critically examines the way in which the.