Improving the Quality of Higher Education in India

India’s higher education system has come a long way since independence – from a handful of universities serving a small elite to a network of over 56,000 institutions enrolling around 40 million students. But sheer scale has never been the same thing as quality. Even as enrollment numbers grew through each Five-Year Plan, a persistent question remained unanswered: are students actually learning? That question – about the qualitative improvement of higher education – sits at the heart of India’s most important ongoing policy challenge.

The foundational challenge: access first, quality later 🔗

After independence, India’s immediate priority was building a trained workforce for a young nation with ambitious development plans. Prime Minister Nehru’s vision of rapid industrialisation through Five-Year Plans required trained professionals, and the country faced acute shortages. In response, the government focused heavily on expanding higher education infrastructure – setting up IITs, establishing the University Grants Commission (UGC) in 1956, and increasing the number of universities from 27 at independence to 45 by the end of the Second Five-Year Plan.

This was the right instinct for the time. But the focus was almost entirely on access – getting more students through the doors of more institutions. Quality took a back seat. The result was a system that grew wide but not necessarily deep. Teaching methods remained largely unchanged, infrastructure in many colleges lagged behind, and the connection between what students learned and what the economy actually needed was often weak.

Challenges in higher education quality 🔗

The structural problems that accumulated over decades of expansion-first planning are well-documented. Three stand out most clearly.

Outdated teaching methods and curriculum 🔗

For much of the post-independence period, higher education in India was built on a content-delivery model – lecturers talked, students listened, and exams tested recall. Critical thinking, problem-solving, and applied learning were rarely prioritized. Even today, outdated curriculum and teaching methods that do not align with industry requirements remain a recognised barrier to quality. The gap between what universities teach and what employers need has become sharper as India’s economy modernised faster than its classrooms.

Faculty shortages 🔗

A system can only be as good as the people who teach in it. Faculty shortage is rampant across all categories of institutions in India, with even the IITs and IIMs having 40% and 31% faculty vacancies respectively. The reasons are not hard to find – inadequate pay, poor career progression, and limited research funding make academic positions unattractive to many of India’s brightest graduates. Shortage of faculty leads to ad-hoc expansion even in premier institutions, with contractual and temporary appointments becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Infrastructure gaps 🔗

Poor physical and digital infrastructure has long hampered the higher education experience. Public sector universities in India often lack the necessary infrastructure due to budget deficits, and many private institutions are not significantly better by global standards. Laboratories, libraries, internet connectivity, and research facilities – all critical to genuine higher learning – remain inadequate in a large portion of institutions.

Government initiatives for quality assurance 🔗

The shift from a purely access-focused approach to one that also emphasized quality was gradual. It did not happen in one plan or under one government – it evolved across decades.

The National Policy on Education, 1986 🔗

The National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986 was the first to explicitly articulate the need for “quality” in education, signalling a major shift in how the government thought about the problem. It was no longer enough to build institutions and fill seats – outcomes had to improve too. The policy led to the Programme of Action (1992), which laid out concrete steps, including the call for an independent national accreditation body.

The birth of NAAC 🔗

That call was answered in 1994 with the establishment of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) as an autonomous body under the UGC, headquartered in Bengaluru. NAAC’s core mandate is to make quality assurance an integral part of how every higher education institution (HEI) in India functions. It evaluates institutions across seven criteria: curricular aspects, teaching-learning and evaluation, research and innovation, infrastructure, student support, governance, and institutional values. Institutions are graded on a scale from A++ to C, with D indicating non-accreditation.

NAAC’s impact has been real but uneven. Over 12,000 institutions have been accredited at least once, and NAAC grades have become mandatory for institutional autonomy and eligibility for government grants. However, the system has also faced serious credibility challenges. In February 2025, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested a NAAC inspection committee chairman and six other members in connection with a bribery scheme in which assessors allegedly received cash and other items in exchange for favourable ratings – a stark reminder that accreditation systems are only as strong as their integrity mechanisms.

Despite this, NAAC announced plans in 2023 to overhaul its accreditation framework with a more data-driven approach, emphasising institutional outcomes and global benchmarking – a necessary course correction for a body central to India’s quality assurance story.

RUSA and strategic funding 🔗

The Twelfth Five-Year Plan introduced the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a major initiative designed to provide performance-linked strategic funding to state universities and colleges. Unlike earlier blanket grants, RUSA tied financial support to measurable improvements – incentivizing institutions to raise standards rather than simply maintain enrolment. The plan also saw increased funding for research, with emphasis on creating innovation ecosystems within universities.

The rise of open and distance learning 🔗

One of the most consequential developments in India’s push for wider access to quality higher education has been the growth of open and distance learning (ODL). The idea of an open university in India was first seriously mooted in the 1970s, and Andhra Pradesh established the country’s first open university on 26th August 1982, now called Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Open University. This was followed by the establishment of IGNOU in 1985.

IGNOU: scaling access at a national level 🔗

The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in 1985 by an Act of Parliament with the dual responsibilities of enhancing access and equity to higher education through distance mode and promoting standards in open learning. Today, it is one of the world’s largest universities. IGNOU achieved record registrations of 753,286 students in the 2023-24 academic year, and it currently offers over 325 programmes through 21 Schools of Studies, supported by 69 regional centres and more than 2,000 learner support centres across India. Notably, it has also earned an A++ accreditation from NAAC – the first open university to do so.

IGNOU’s instructional model is deliberately multi-modal: it provides print materials, audio-video content, radio and educational TV broadcasts, teleconferencing, video conferencing, and face-to-face counselling at study centres throughout the country. More recently, it has integrated MOOCs through SWAYAM and digital repositories like e-Gyankosh to keep pace with learners’ expectations.

ODL’s role in expanding the gross enrolment ratio 🔗

Distance and open learning currently accounts for around one-tenth of India’s total higher education enrolment. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 explicitly recognises the importance of open and distance learning as a means to achieve universal access, and it envisions all higher education institutions becoming multidisciplinary by 2040, with online education playing a key role in reaching underserved populations.

ODL is particularly significant for working professionals, women, students in remote areas, and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Flexibility, affordability, and time-efficiency are the three core pillars of distance education – and these are precisely the barriers that have historically kept large segments of India’s population out of higher education. However, ODL’s effectiveness is still constrained by the digital divide. Brilliant technology interfaces are often handicapped by network restrictions and unreliable electricity, limiting their reach in the very regions where they are needed most.

Future steps for quality enhancement 🔗

The direction forward is reasonably clear, even if the path is steep.

Technology as a quality lever 🔗

The integration of technology into higher education is no longer a future aspiration – it is an immediate necessity. Yet, there exists a lack of dedicated government policies for the use of technology in higher education, and limited integration of digital learning in lower-quality institutions. Closing this gap requires both investment in infrastructure and a deliberate policy push to make digital learning tools available and usable across all tiers of the system – not just at elite institutions.

Interdisciplinary research and industry linkages 🔗

India’s overall graduate employability stood at 50.8% in 2023, indicating vast scope for improvement. A significant part of the solution lies in stronger industry-academia partnerships. Institutions need to position themselves as genuine research and consulting partners for industry, co-develop courses with employers, and embed career development into their academic programmes. The Twelfth Plan’s concept of innovation universities and meta-universities pointed in this direction, and NEP 2020 reinforces it.

Strengthening accreditation 🔗

Accreditation must evolve from a box-ticking exercise into a genuine engine of quality improvement. NAAC’s new framework aims to incorporate stakeholder surveys from alumni, employers, faculty, and community partners, and aligns with international accreditation norms and the Sustainable Development Goals. A shift toward outcome-based assessment – measuring what students can actually do rather than what inputs an institution has – is central to making accreditation meaningful. The NEP 2020 aims to improve India’s higher education gross enrolment ratio to 50% by 2035 and push Indian universities into the global top 100. Meeting those targets will require accreditation to be both credible and transformative.

Faculty development as a non-negotiable priority 🔗

No quality improvement agenda can succeed without addressing the faculty crisis. Competitive pay, structured research incentives, and robust pre-service and in-service training programmes are all essential. The UGC and NAAC conduct regular training for faculty and administrators, and high-grade colleges are encouraged to mentor lower-grade ones – a hub-and-spoke model for peer learning that could be scaled significantly. Attracting and retaining qualified teachers is not just an HR problem; it is the single most direct intervention available for improving what happens inside a classroom.

India’s higher education story is one of genuine ambition meeting persistent structural challenges. The journey from a quality-blind expansion model to a quality-conscious, technology-enabled, and globally competitive system is underway – but it is far from complete. Each Five-Year Plan added a layer of intent; the task now is to turn intent into measurable learning outcomes at scale.

What do you think? Given that faculty vacancies persist even at India’s top institutions like the IITs and IIMs, what reforms would most effectively attract and retain quality educators in higher education? And as open and distance learning grows, how should institutions ensure that a degree earned online carries the same academic rigour and employer trust as one earned on campus?

References

1. https://www.ey.com/en_in/insights/education/how-can-indian-higher-education-prepare-to-leapfrog-in-the-next-two-years
2. https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/articles/the-long-arc-of-education-reform-in-india
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_India
4. https://testbook.com/ias-preparation/national-assessment-accreditation-council
5. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-analysis/national-assessment-and-accreditation-council-naac-assessing-system
6. https://naac.gov.in
7. https://www.luneblaze.com/blogs/The-Story-of-NAAC-India%E2%80%99s-Higher-Education-Quality-Guardian
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_and_Accreditation_Council
9. https://www.youthpolicyreview.com/post/reaching-the-unreached-open-and-distance-learning-in-india
10. https://www.education.gov.in/en/technology-enabled-learning-3
11. https://distancelearning.institute/economic-perspective/distance-education-india-challenges-opportunities/
12. https://www.selectyouruniversity.com/blog/distance-online-learning-india-odl-higher-education
13. https://gpcbanaspaithani.in/naac-accreditation-and-quality-assurance-in-government-colleges/