In February 2025, members of a peer-review team of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), including its chairman, were arrested by the CBI for allegedly accepting bribes to grant a top ‘A++’ grade to an institution. If accreditation, the very system meant to certify quality, can be compromised, then what are we truly measuring: institutional merit or institutional performance in staging merit?

What was once a quality assurance measure has, over time, developed into a kind of industry. Institutions now build dedicated teams — sometimes only for accreditation cycles — whose main job is to prepare for inspections, carefully organising activities to meet expected standards. Whether programmes are truly meaningful becomes less important. What matters is whether they can be documented, formatted, and presented convincingly. This process favours those who excel at presenting well over those who maintain genuine academic depth.

Too much documentation

At the heart of this transformation is the overwhelming dominance of documentation. The NAAC framework, with its multiple criteria — curriculum, teaching-learning, research, infrastructure, governance, and institutional values — requires extensive supporting documents. Digital submission has reduced physical paperwork but enhanced the demand for continuous data collection. Faculty members are increasingly burdened with preparing reports, uploading evidence, and maintaining records. A well-documented activity becomes more valid than a meaningful but undocumented academic endeavour, and education risks turning into a scripted performance.

This is in contrast to practices at institutions like the University of Michigan, the U.S., where evaluation is done by the Higher Learning Commission, whose assessors review selected student work, course outcomes, and institutional processes against the demands of extensive documentation. Under the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET), a single capstone project demonstrating student competence can outweigh volumes of activity records. The prime focus is on what students have learned, not on how much institutions can project.

The issue worsens when accreditation influences rankings like those in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), which depend heavily upon data provided by institutions themselves. Although verification systems exist, the recent scandal highlights their loopholes. If peer review can be manipulated, the trustworthiness of the entire ranking system is compromised.

Institutions, in turn, use accreditation and rankings as marketing tools by prominently showcasing grades and positions to attract students. Prestige becomes a product that is carefully packaged and marketed. In this process, the line between authentic academic quality and strategic self-presentation becomes increasingly blurred.

International systems offer an entirely different approach. In the U.K., universities are assessed by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), which does not assign grades. Instead, it evaluates whether institutional activities genuinely promote student learning. Reviews vary from direct engagement with students to scrutiny of internal academic systems rather than curated displays. Similarly, in Australia, institutions are reviewed by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which uses a risk-based approach. High-performing universities hardly experience any bureaucratic intervention, and audits focus on long-term indicators such as student progress and graduate success.

Impact on faculty

As teachers become more engaged in documentation and compliance, their interaction with students declines. Ongoing assessment, mentoring, and intellectual exchange are overshadowed by administrative tasks. Teachers, in turn, become mere observers of the ongoing curriculum rather than active participants, focusing on collecting evidence instead of promoting understanding.

This distortion is especially severe in India’s uneven educational landscape. Rural and under-resourced institutions, lacking basic infrastructure, are assessed using the same criteria as well-funded urban counterparts. Accreditation, instead of reducing inequality, often worsens it by favouring visibility and resources over context and effort.

Nearly two decades into operating accreditation and ranking systems, it is worth questioning their real impact. Has academic quality truly improved? Could students experience meaningful learning? Or have institutions just become better at self-promotion?

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 proposes a restructured accreditation framework that emphasises transparency, technology, and continuous evaluation. While these reforms are mandatory, they will fail if they simply digitise an existing over-bureaucratised system.

Accreditation must return to its core purpose: improving educational quality. This requires a clear shift from focusing on documentation to emphasising results, from valuing performance to emphasising substance, and from mere compliance to promoting creativity. Faculty should be liberated from excessive bureaucratic burdens and reconnected with their primary role as educators. Evaluation must become sensitive to context, acknowledging institutional differences along with providing fair and supportive measures.

Last year’s scandal exposes a deeper systemic problem. When achievements can be staged, recorded, and even bought, accreditation becomes a false facade. For Indian higher education to regain its credibility, it must dismantle this illusion and create a system rooted in honesty, trust, and genuine learning.

Views expressed are personal

The writer is a Professor of English and Dean of Student Affairs, Sahrdaya College of Advanced Studies (Autonomous), Thrissur, Kerala. Email: saniljohn03@gmail.com

Published - August 01, 2026 07:31 pm IST