As its chairperson resigns, a look at what NAAC is and what it does

Bhushan Patwardhan had alleged institutes were obtaining 'questionable grades' through malpractice

The chairperson of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bhushan Patwardhan, resigned on Sunday night. In a letter to the University Grants Commission (UGC) chair M Jagadesh Kumar, Patwardhan said he had resigned “to safeguard self-respect and the sanctity of the post of chairman EC and the NAAC”.

Patwardhan’s resignation comes days after he called for an independent inquiry into the UGC’s decision to appoint an “additional chairman without any legal authority”. Patwardhan also wrote a letter to the UGC chair last month alleging that educational institutions were obtaining “questionable grades” through malpractice.

Following the massive expansion and privatisation of the educational infrastructure in India, concerns surrounding the relevance and quality of higher education began to rise. This prompted the National Policy on Education in 1986 and the Programme of Action in 1992, which laid out actionable plans for the policy recommendations, including the creation of an independent national accreditation agency.

The NAAC is an autonomous institution established under the UGC in 1994 to conduct assessments and provide accreditations to higher educational institutions (HEIs) in India. It is supposed to evaluate colleges, universities, and other recognised institutions throughout the country and determine to what extent they conform to quality standards related to “educational processes and outcomes, curriculum coverage, teaching-learning processes, faculty, research, infrastructure, learning resources, organisation, governance, financial well-being and student services”.

The NAAC accreditation is meant to ensure that an HEI rises to and maintains a certain standard of quality in its operations.

The NAAC accreditation has become a mandatory requirement for HEIs since a gazette notification from the UGC on January 19, 2013. However, the assessment and accreditation process is highly complex and selective, with most HEIs in India not even meeting the required threshold to undergo the process.

To even apply for assessment and accreditation (A&A) by NAAC, the HEI must have a record of at least two student batches graduated or been in existence for six years, whichever is earlier. Institutions that pass this bar are then expected to submit an Institutional Information for Quality Assessment (IIQA) application based on which the NAAC determines if a college, university, or institute is eligible for A&A.

This process is mandatory for all HEIs, and the fees for these applications can be upwards of Rs 6.5 lakh. 

While the NAAC has pledged to improve this process by expanding access and making it more affordable through its ‘Paramarsh’ scheme, meaningful progress has not been made. According to UGC data, out of over 1,100 universities and nearly 45,000 colleges in India, only 418 universities and over 9,000 colleges are accredited by the NAAC. 

Accusations of corruption and inefficiency have bogged down the agency for a long time, and Patwardhan’s resignation has just rekindled the conversation around its method of operation. The UGC is yet to comment on the situation.