Every profession has regulators.

But academia has something more potent — gatekeepers, who guard the system not by design, but by habit.

These gatekeepers are almost always academics themselves.

Brilliant, credentialled, experienced, respected academics.

People who once entered the classroom with fire in their eyes

and now sit in boardrooms with files in their hands.

This is the irony of academia’s underbelly:

the people who understand the system best

are also the people who unintentionally keep it stuck.

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Scene 1: The Circular That Took 14 Months

A committee of twelve senior academics sits in a meeting room.

PowerPoint open.

Minutes ready.

Bureaucratic tea served.

They are revising a curriculum.

Four hours pass.

The final output?

A minor phrase change in a footnote.

Someone jokes quietly,

“Another 12 months and we’ll fix the title.”

Everyone laughs.

A tired, self-aware laugh — the kind that knows the system is slow but cannot imagine it otherwise.

This is how a curriculum becomes a fossil.

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Scene 2: Delhi — A National Regulatory Board Meeting

A young member proposes introducing mandatory internships.

A senior academic says,

“Students already have too much exposure.”

Another says,

“Industry will interfere.”

A third says,

“We cannot disturb the traditional model.”

The proposal dies.

Not from disagreement —

from seniority.

This is how innovation dies in polite, air-conditioned rooms.

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Scene 3: Tokyo — Accreditation Review

A visiting panel of eminent professors evaluates a university.

They spend 90% of their time checking files, minutes, proof, attendance sheets, and lab inventory.

One junior faculty asks,

“Don’t you want to observe a class?”

The panel head smiles,

“That’s not required.”

There is nothing more tragic than quality assessment that ignores quality.

This is how excellence becomes paperwork.

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Scene 4: Cambridge — Informal Dinner

An education policy scholar confesses to her colleague from Melbourne:

“Academics create rules to prevent extreme cases…

and then those rules punish everyone else.”

Her colleague adds,

“And when loopholes appear, we create more rules.”

This is the regulatory circle of life.

A maze built by smart people who are too busy to realise they are prisoners of their own architecture.

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Why Does the Regulatory Empire Fail Its Own Profession?

1. Power Accumulates Without Purpose

Committees are formed to solve problems.

Over time, committees forget their purpose and remember only their power.

2. Seniority Replaces Merit

The most experienced voice becomes the loudest voice.

Not the most creative.

Not the most updated.

Not the most student-focused.

3. Safety Is Prioritised Over Progress

Regulators fear:

• disruption

• criticism

• legal consequences

• blame

• unpredictability

So they choose the safest option: status quo.

4. Rules Are Designed for Control, Not Freedom

Token compliance is easier than genuine transformation.

This creates institutions that perform well on paper and poorly in reality.

5. Reform Is Slower Than Decline

It takes one meeting to freeze a curriculum.

It takes five years to update it.

It takes ten years for students to feel the impact.

By then, the world has changed three times.

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Scene 5: An IIT Professor’s Whisper to a Young Regulator

At a conference coffee table, a young regulator asks a veteran professor,

“Why don’t regulatory bodies listen to teachers anymore?”

The professor smiles bitterly,

“Because regulators are teachers…

just older, tired, and surrounded by files instead of students.”

This is the tragedy:

Teachers leave the classroom,

enter committees,

forget the classroom,

and then decide what the classroom should look like.

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The Emotional Root of the Regulatory Underbelly

The regulatory empire is not malicious.

It is tired.

Drained.

Overburdened.

Built on good intentions and bad incentives.

These gatekeepers are not villains.

They are veterans who have been fighting the system for so long

that they slowly became part of the system’s armour.

Most regulators do not realise the weight of their decisions.

They believe they are protecting academia.

But they are protecting its past,

not its future.

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The Unspoken Truth (heard in closed-door conversations)

A professor from LSE once admitted to her old colleague from IIM Ahmedabad:

“We create frameworks we would never want to teach under.”

He replied,

“We make rules for compliance,

not for learning.”

A pause.

Then she whispered,

“But we keep doing it anyway.”

This is the quiet ethics of the underbelly —

painful honesty,

spoken only to equals.

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The Underbelly Summary

Academics control regulatory bodies.

Regulatory bodies control institutions.

Institutions control teachers.

Teachers control classrooms.

Classrooms shape students.

Students shape the world.

When the top freezes,

the bottom suffocates.

And that is how a brilliant profession

becomes hostage to its own hierarchy.