How Accreditation Works: A Look at India’s Higher Education Standards

India’s higher education system is one of the largest in the world, with thousands of universities and colleges serving millions of students every year. But size alone doesn’t guarantee quality. How does a student, employer, or policymaker know whether a degree actually reflects rigorous learning? That’s precisely where quality assurance and accreditation come in – a structured, multi-layered system designed to hold institutions accountable to defined academic and administrative standards. Here’s a clear breakdown of how it works in India today.

Who sets the standards? The role of UGC, AICTE, and other regulatory bodies 🔗

At the top of India’s higher education regulatory architecture sits the University Grants Commission (UGC), a statutory body established under the Ministry of Education in 1956. Its primary mandate is to coordinate, determine, and maintain the standards of university education across the country. UGC grants formal recognition to universities, ensures they meet national academic and operational benchmarks, and disburses funding to eligible institutions. Crucially, only degrees awarded by UGC-recognised universities carry legal validity for government jobs, competitive examinations, and further studies in India.

Running parallel to the UGC is the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), a statutory body that focuses specifically on technical and professional education. First established in 1945 as an advisory body and given statutory status in 1987, AICTE is responsible for planning, coordinating, and maintaining quality standards in fields such as engineering, technology, management, pharmacy, and architecture. While UGC recognises the university that awards the degree, AICTE approves the college and its specific technical programmes – meaning a valid engineering or MBA degree typically requires both approvals to be in place. AICTE does not award degrees itself; it simply certifies that the institution meets the quality bar required to offer those programmes.

Beyond UGC and AICTE, other sector-specific bodies play an important role. The National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) regulates teacher training programmes, the Bar Council of India oversees law colleges, and the Medical Council of India (now replaced by the National Medical Commission) was the apex body for medical education. Together, these regulators form the first line of quality control – setting minimum eligibility conditions before an institution can even begin operations.

The accreditation process: from self-study to peer review 🔗

Once an institution is operational and regulatory approvals are in place, the next layer of quality assurance is accreditation. In India, this function is primarily handled by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous body established by the UGC in 1994 in direct response to the National Policy on Education (1986) and its Programme of Action (1992), which had flagged the deterioration of educational quality as a serious concern. For technical programmes specifically, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) – an independent body under AICTE – handles programme-level accreditation.

To be eligible for NAAC assessment, an institution must have had at least two batches of students graduate, or have been in existence for at least six years, whichever comes first. The institution must also be registered on the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) portal, which serves as a central data repository. Importantly, NAAC does not cover distance education units or offshore campuses – only regular on-campus programmes qualify.

The accreditation itself follows a structured three-step process:

Step 1 – Self-Study Report (SSR): The institution prepares a comprehensive report evaluating itself against NAAC’s defined criteria. This document covers everything from curriculum design and faculty qualifications to research output, infrastructure, and governance. The SSR is submitted to NAAC along with supporting data.

Step 2 – Data Validation and Peer Team Visit: NAAC verifies the data submitted and then sends a team of peer reviewers – experienced academics and administrators – for an on-site visit. The peer team examines facilities, interacts with faculty, students, and management, and independently assesses the institution’s claims. The revised framework introduced in 2017 replaced purely subjective peer judgments with data-based quantitative analysis to improve transparency and reduce inter-team variation.

Step 3 – Grading and Announcement: NAAC’s Executive Council reviews the consolidated report – combining quantitative indicators, qualitative metrics, and a Student Satisfaction Survey – before announcing the institution’s accreditation grade. Grades are awarded on an eight-point scale: A++, A+, A, B++, B+, B, C, and D. Institutions graded C and above are considered accredited.

The revised accreditation framework (RAF) and what’s changing 🔗

India’s accreditation landscape is currently undergoing a significant overhaul aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Under a committee led by Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, NAAC has proposed a new system with two components. The first is Binary Accreditation, which simply classifies institutions as “Accredited” or “Not Accredited” – a simpler entry-level assessment modelled on international practice. The second is Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation (MBGA), which rates institutions on a scale of Level 1 to Level 5. Levels 1 through 4 designate “Institutions of National Excellence,” while Level 5 is reserved for “Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education.” This levelled approach is intended to give institutions a continuous incentive to improve, rather than treating accreditation as a one-time hurdle. The framework also introduces a “One Nation One Data” platform to enable cross-verification of institutional data and reduce manual intervention in the assessment process.

Quality indicators: how universities measure and improve performance 🔗

NAAC currently evaluates institutions across seven criteria, each weighted differently depending on whether the institution is a university, an autonomous college, or an affiliated college. These seven criteria are:

1. Curricular aspects – Is the curriculum relevant, updated, and aligned with learning outcomes? 2. Teaching-learning and evaluation – How effective and innovative are the pedagogical practices? 3. Research, innovations, and extension – Does the institution contribute to knowledge creation and community engagement? 4. Infrastructure and learning resources – Are physical and digital facilities adequate? 5. Student support and progression – Are students receiving mentoring, scholarships, and career guidance? 6. Governance, leadership, and management – Is the administration transparent and strategic? 7. Institutional values and best practices – Does the institution demonstrate gender sensitivity, environmental responsibility, and ethical standards?

Under each criterion, specific Key Indicators (KIs) are defined, which are further broken down into measurable metrics. For each key aspect, institutions receive grades ranging from A (Very Good) to D (Unsatisfactory), and a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) is calculated across all seven criteria to arrive at the final accreditation grade.

A critical internal mechanism tied to all of this is the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), which every accredited institution is required to establish. The IQAC functions as an in-house quality monitoring body – collecting data, reviewing academic processes, and preparing Annual Quality Assurance Reports (AQARs) that institutions must upload annually. This ensures quality assurance is not a once-every-five-years exercise, but an ongoing institutional practice.

For technical programmes, the NBA uses a parallel set of programme-level outcomes-based indicators – assessing whether graduates actually achieve the competencies the programme claims to develop. This outcomes-based approach, borrowed from international accreditation models like those used by ABET in the United States, is gradually influencing how Indian institutions think about curriculum design and student assessment.

Challenges in implementation: enforcing consistent quality benchmarks 🔗

Despite this well-designed architecture, the on-ground reality of quality assurance in India presents significant challenges.

Low accreditation coverage 🔗

India has over 1,000 universities and more than 40,000 colleges. Yet, as of June 2023, only around 820 universities and 15,501 colleges had received NAAC accreditation. This means a large portion of higher education institutions operate without any formal external quality assessment – leaving students in those institutions without the quality assurance that accreditation is meant to provide.

Lack of standardisation across institutions 🔗

One of the most persistent problems is inconsistency in implementation. While new quality assurance measures introduced since 1994 have brought many institutions under closer scrutiny – reviewing admissions, faculty recruitment, and administrative practices – the actual standards applied can vary widely between institutions. Some institutions have rigorous internal review processes aligned with global norms; others treat compliance as a paperwork exercise. This disparity makes it difficult for students and employers to judge the real value of a credential.

Integrity and transparency concerns 🔗

Perhaps the most alarming challenge is the vulnerability of the accreditation process itself to malpractice. In February 2025, the Central Bureau of Investigation arrested the chairman and six members of a NAAC inspection committee along with representatives from a Guntur-based institution, after uncovering a bribery scheme in which assessors allegedly received cash, gold, and electronics in exchange for favourable accreditation ratings. Raids across 20 locations resulted in seizures of approximately ₹37 lakh and various electronic items. This case, while extreme, underscores the broader challenge that accreditation bodies themselves are not insulated from corruption allegations – and that integrity within the system is as important as integrity of the institutions being evaluated.

Data accuracy and the documentation burden 🔗

The self-study process requires institutions to compile five years’ worth of data across hundreds of metrics. This creates a significant administrative load, particularly for smaller colleges with limited staff. The risk of data errors – or, in worse cases, data manipulation – is real. The proposed “One Nation One Data” platform attempts to address this by enabling independent cross-verification of institutional claims, reducing dependence on self-reported data alone.

Rural and under-resourced institutions 🔗

Institutions in rural or remote areas often face a structural disadvantage – limited funding, fewer qualified faculty, and poor infrastructure make it harder to meet accreditation benchmarks. The revised NAAC framework acknowledges this by proposing guidance and handholding for institutions from rural and remote areas to help them secure better grading – a recognition that a one-size-fits-all assessment framework may not be equitable across India’s enormously varied educational landscape.

Overlapping jurisdictions 🔗

The multiplicity of regulatory bodies – UGC, AICTE, NCTE, state-level regulators, and sector-specific councils – creates overlapping mandates and compliance burdens. Critics have long pointed out that input-centric norms add to institutional costs without necessarily improving educational outcomes, and proposals to consolidate regulatory functions have been discussed at various points, including the previously proposed Higher Education Empowerment Regulation Agency (HEERA), though these have not yet been fully implemented.

Why accreditation still matters 🔗

Despite its imperfections, accreditation remains the most systematic tool available for ensuring a minimum standard of quality across India’s vast and diverse higher education system. For students, an accredited institution signals that the degree they are earning meets nationally validated standards – and state universities without NAAC accreditation are ineligible for financial assistance and grants from the UGC, which directly affects the resources available to students and faculty. For institutions, the accreditation process – however demanding – provides a structured framework for identifying weaknesses, allocating resources more strategically, and building a culture of continuous improvement. And for employers and policymakers, accreditation data provides one of the few objective bases for evaluating institutional performance across a system too large and diverse to monitor any other way.

The shift towards outcomes-based assessment, digital data platforms, and maturity-level grading under the new NAAC framework suggests that India is moving towards a more nuanced, trustworthy system – one that rewards genuine improvement rather than just procedural compliance.

What do you think? Given that a large proportion of Indian colleges remain unaccredited, should accreditation be made mandatory for all institutions operating above a minimum enrolment threshold? And as the accreditation system shifts from letter grades to maturity-based levels, do you think this change will make quality benchmarks clearer and fairer for institutions across different regions and resource levels?

References

1. https://www.ugc.ac.in
2. https://www.ndimdelhi.org/ugc-vs-aicte/
3. https://www.aicte-india.org
4. http://naac.gov.in
5. https://www.iitms.co.in/blog/complete-guide-to-naac-accreditation-for-higher-education-institutions.html
6. https://www.education.gov.in/nep/about-nep
7. https://www.vaave.com/blog/major-changes-in-naac-guidelines-2024/
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_and_Accreditation_Council
9. https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-981-287-079-7_123-1
10. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371740521_Quality_Assurance_and_Academic_Integrity_in_Higher_Education_in_India
11. https://www.theigc.org/sites/default/files/2015/11/Shah-2015-Working-paper.pdf
12. https://distanceeducationschool.com/naac-approved-online-distance-universities-list/