It was set up in accordance to the UGC Act 1956[2] and is charged with coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of higher education in India.

[5] In August 1949 a recommendation was made to reconstitute the UGC along similar lines to the University Grants Committee of the United Kingdom.

Subsequently, an inauguration was held on 28 December 1953 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the Minister of Education, Natural Resources and Scientific Research.

[2] In 1994 and 1995, the UGC decentralized its operations by setting up six regional centres at Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Guwahati and Bangalore.

[10] In February 2022, M. Jagadesh Kumar, a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Delhi and former VC of JNU, was appointed as the chairman of the UGC.

Accreditation for higher learning over universities under the aegis of University Grants Commission is overseen by following fifteen autonomous statutory institutions:[21][22] In 2009, the Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Kapil Sibal made known the government of India's plans to consider the closing down of the UGC and the related body All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), in favour of a higher regulatory body with more sweeping powers.

Those agencies involved in medicine and law would be exempt from this merger "to set minimum standards for medical and legal education leading to professional practice".

[29] On 13 April 2022 the University Grants Commission of India (UGC India) announced to allow the students to complete two academic programmes simultaneously keeping in view the proposals outlined in the National Education Policy - NEP 2020 which emphasizes the need to enable multiple pathways to learning involving both formal and non-formal education modes.