NAAC: Rooting out the rot in ranking

With a scam casting a shadow over its credibility, the NAAC has started bringing about reforms in its assessment and accreditation process

The credibility of the NAAC, mandated to assess and accredit higher educational institutes, has come under scrutiny after it had to fire 840 of its 5000 assessors for irregularities even as the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested seven members of its inspection committee for allegedly demanding and accepting bribes in exchange of ensuring favourable rating for a university.

The organisation claims that it is putting in place a rigorous selection process to appoint assessors and follow the policy of ‘Right Grade for Right Institute’, but sceptics are not entirely convinced about the reform measures set in motion.

The NAAC appoints academics as assessors to visit higher educational institutions or HEIs, assess their credentials and certify them with gradings as part of the accreditation process. The vulnerability of the process to the menace of corruption came to the public domain when the CBI conducted raids at 20 locations in Chennai, Bengaluru, Vijayawada, Palamu, Sambalpur, Bhopal, Bilaspur, Gautam Budh Nagar and New Delhi early last month and unearthed the bribery scam. The officials of the Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation (KLEF) based in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh were also arrested for allegedly offering cash, laptops, and smartphones to the assessors. The scandal brought to light how some of the HEIs could use the power of money to manipulate the rating process and to get high NAAC grades to build reputation, avail government funds and academic autonomy, apart from misleading parents and students. With no other credible independent assessment body in India, parents and students often trust NAAC ratings for making well-informed choices of HEIs. This puts pressure on institutes to hanker after good NAAC ratings.

In reply to an unstarred question in Rajya Sabha in December 2024, on the number of HEIs in the country accredited by NAAC, the government informed that till date, out of 1168 universities and 45473 colleges, 498 universities and 10652 colleges have been accredited under the current framework. NAAC assesses and grades the HEIs on five key parameters – curriculum, faculty, infrastructure, research, and financial well-being.

However, even before the raids and arrests by the CBI, various committees have been pointing out the lack of transparency and disproportionate assignment of assessors, as well as doubts over the authenticity of data submitted by the HEIs and the credibility of the Data Validation and Verification (DVV) process. They also pinpointed the lack of transparency in the criteria and weightage given to the parameters used for assessment and the disproportionate assignment of assessors and violation of the code of conduct.

An expert committee, led by J P Singh Joorel, then director of INFLIBNET, in its report submitted in September 2022, pointed out the glaring shortcomings in the NAAC’s assessment and accreditation process for the HEIs, including arbitrary decisions in assignments, allotments and selection of experts, conflicts of interests, inadequate cyber security measures and a potentially compromised ICT system. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2023 pointed out cases of awarding “arbitrary grades” to several HEIs by the NAAC.

Bhushan Patwardhan, former chairman of the NAAC’s Executive Committee, had flagged some of the malpractices, including large variations in data provided by DVV and PTV (Peer Team Visit) scores. He reiterated his concerns about awarding questionable grades to some HEIs in a letter to the UGC chairperson, M Jagadeesh Kumar, in February 2023, before resigning in March 2023.

The reviewing of work, conduct and performance of assessors have been in progress over the past one and half years. Irregularities like travelling a day before evaluation, visiting only their institute of choice, and providing incorrect information to authorities for awarding favourable ratings were found. It was found that the process of experts’ selection was not clear and resulted in the repetition of experts frequently.

Kumar, who is also the president of the NAAC general council, told DH that the assessment and accreditation agency was working on the recommendation of the committee headed by Dr K Radhakrishnan for transition to a simplified system of classifying HEIs as ‘Accredited’ and ‘Not Accredited’.

The recommendations were supposed to have been implemented in July 2024 but now have been pushed to April-May, 2025.

The NAAC informed all assessors in July 2024 that their performance was being monitored. Ganesan Kannabiran, the director of the NAAC, said that many of the 840 assessors axed by the agency recently had been under review even before the raids and arrests by the CBI. “We have initiated a two-tier evaluation process, wherever required. Now, if we find discrepancies in the Qualitative and Quantitative Metrics given by the DVV and the PTV and see high jumps in rankings, we put the HEI under review by a member of the Standing Committee,” he said.

“Earlier, each HEI gave an undertaking saying that all information is authentic. Now we would want an affidavit from the HEI regarding the same. And experts would be chosen by computer algorithm and only told a month in advance now, which was three months earlier. And the HEI would know about the visiting peer team only two days before. We have onboarded 1400 new assessors recommended by a committee of Vice-Chancellors. They would now be trained, especially to follow the ethical codes,” said Kannabiran.

The NAAC tightened the DVV process. “The 1400 new assessors who would now be trained, especially to follow the ethical codes,” Kannabiran told DH. “After the reform measures were initiated, out of the 400 HEIs reviewed, 200 were re-reviewed before their grades were given out. We follow the policy of ‘Right Grade for Right Institute’”.

“Removing the corrupt assessors is a good step but I believe the institutes who were given high grades need also to be reviewed. A vigilance report of each assessor, to be cleared by regional centres, should also be made mandatory,” said Patwardhan.

However some experts express apprehension that completely doing away with physical verification for ‘basic accreditation’ will again have loopholes. They also emphasise that the new reform measures would eventually be successful only if there is transparency in the DVV process and if NAAC accreditation reports are put out in the public domain.  

(The writer is a senior journalist)