NAAC bribery case: What is NAAC, why have there been proposals to change accreditation process

Through a former deputy adviser at NAAC, a professor at Bangalore University, and an adviser at NAAC, KLEF office bearers sought the inclusion of “known members” in the NAAC inspection team, and the names of team members were revealed to the institution before they were officially communicated by NAAC, the FIR alleges.

This is, however, not the first time that there have been questions over alleged malpractices in the NAAC grading process. The NAAC chairman quit in 2023 citing such issues.

What is the NAAC grading process? Why is it important?

NAAC is a body set up in 1994 under the University Grants Commission (UGC) — the UGC chief heads its governing council — with the purpose of evaluating the performance of higher education institutions, and providing accreditation. NAAC grades are widely regarded as a marker of quality, with institutions prominently displaying them. According to UGC regulations, this is meant to “enable students and other stakeholders to make informed choices”.

UGC regulations of 2012 made it mandatory for higher education institutions to get accredited after six years of functioning, or after two batches have graduated. This means that for funds from the UGC, a higher education institution needs to be accredited. These grades also specifically matter in certain scenarios — for instance, to apply for autonomy, a college needs to be accredited with a minimum NAAC grade of ‘A’.

Institutions are assessed on parameters including infrastructure, teaching and evaluation, governance, and research. The process of assessment involves the institute itself submitting a ‘self-study’ report, a ‘student satisfaction survey’ conducted by NAAC, and a ‘peer team visit’. 

To constitute these peer teams, NAAC invites registrations from professors across different domains of expertise. NAAC officials said that from this database of experts from across the country, a computerised system selects members, depending on their expertise, who will form the team that will visit, and inspect the institution and submit its report. The system is meant to function in such a way that teams do not comprise members who are from the State where the institution is located, the official said. 

It is one such team that KLEF office bearers allegedly tried to get “known members” into.  

What does the NAAC accreditation process result in?

It ends with a NAAC grade and accreditation — certification of quality provided by NAAC for a period of five years or seven years in the case of institutions that have had an ‘A’ grade or higher in previous cycles, after which they need to apply again. 

KLEF first secured a grade A in 2013, and an A++ in 2018. It applied again in February 2024, and was scheduled for a peer team visit in January this year.

Based on the parameters they are assessed on, the institution is given a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) corresponding to grades – an eight-point grading system ranging from the highest A++ to the lowest D. Anything from A++ to C means that the institute is accredited, while a D means it is not.

KLEF was allegedly seeking an A++ grade, according to the CBI FIR.

What issues have been raised with this process in the past?

Bhushan Patwardhan, former chairperson of NAAC’s executive committee, resigned from his post in 2023, a little after he wrote to the UGC Chairman questioning the accreditation process.  

“Based on my experience, various complaints from the stakeholders, and review committee reports, I had expressed my apprehensions earlier about the possibility of vested interests, malpractices, and nexus among the persons concerned, offering thereby a green corridor by presumably manipulating processes leading to the awarding of questionable grades to some HEIs [higher education institutions],” he wrote.

In 2022, a seven-member committee constituted by Patwardhan, and headed by Prof J P Singh Joorel, looked into the NAAC assessment process. Its report said that “NAAC utilises a very small pool of experts for selecting the members of visiting teams, only 20-30% assessors from the existing pool are being utilised”, and that the process of selecting these experts “seems neither random nor sequential.” 

The report added that the pool of experts generated by the system is forwarded to a ‘peer team selection committee’ which finalises the members. It had also recommended reforms in the online process flow, and IT infrastructure citing the possibility of “challenges to data integrity.”

What changes have been proposed to the NAAC grading system?

The National Education Policy 2020 envisions that “in the long run, accreditation will become a binary process, as per the extant global practice”.

A committee headed by former ISRO chief K Radhakrishnan was constituted by the Ministry of Education in November 2022, to recommend measures to strengthen the accreditation system. It suggested that the present eight-point grading system transition into a binary accreditation system — the institution will be identified as ‘accredited’, ‘awaiting accreditation’, or ‘not accredited.’

It also suggests that accredited institutions be “encouraged” to “raise their bar…from ‘Level 1’ to ‘Level 4’ Institutions of National Excellence, and then to ‘Level-5’ i.e. Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education.”

The NAAC official said that this committee was constituted since there were already apprehensions about the existing process. In 2024, NAAC announced reforms in the accreditation process in line with the committee’s recommendations — binary accreditation instead of grades, along with a “maturity-based graded accreditation” (levels 1 to 5) for accredited institutions “to improve their quality”. Institutions can evolve from Levels 1 to 4 as “institutions of national excellence”, and progress to Level 5 as “Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education”.

This system is still in the process of being rolled out with workshops having been held with stakeholders so far, the official said. The binary system is expected to do away with the push among institutions to get an A+ and advertise it, sources associated with NAAC said.

To minimise dependence on physical visits by the expert team, the committee had suggested “stakeholder-crowdsourcing…as a methodology for validation of data submitted by the institute” — feedback of stakeholders and crowdsourcing as a way of collecting data with participation of faculty, students, alumni, parents, and peer groups.