The resignation of bhushan Patwardhan, executive committee chairperson of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994), on March 5 has opened up a can of worms and aroused fears relating to smooth implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. In his resignation letter to University Grants Commission chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, Patwardhan alleged that “vested interests and malpractices” had enabled some higher education institutions (HEIs) to obtain “questionable grades”.

Monitors of India’s HEIs are surprised that it has taken so long for NAAC’s shoddy “malpractices” to come to light. The reality that high grades and rating can be purchased for money and inducements from NAAC and AICTE (which regulates engineering and technical colleges) has been well-known for years if not decades. This explains why despite NAAC being of 27 years vintage, only 9,062 colleges (out of 43,796 countrywide) and a mere 418 universities (out of 1,113) have signed up for NAAC accreditation. It lacks credibility.

Patwardhan’s exposure of deep-rooted corruption within NAAC comes at a fortuitous time, when the country is in the process of implementing the new NEP 2020. Enlightened and contemporary, NEP 2020 which inter alia mandates integration of early childhood and skills education into formal schooling, and internationalisation of higher education has — as repeatedly highlighted by your editors — a fundamental contradiction.

On the one hand, it recommends gradual progress towards full autonomy for all HEIs, but on the other it mandates establishment of numerous supervisory bodies — Higher Education Council of India supported by four verticals, viz, National Higher Education Regulation Council, National Accreditation Council (successor of NAAC), Higher Education Grants Council and General Education Council to regulate, accredit, fund and set learning outcome standards. And although the Kasturirangan Committee Report which recommended this elaborate regulatory superstructure also recommends selection of individuals of “unimpeachable integrity” to regulate education in a “light but tight manner”, as the NAAC scandal indicates, these individuals don’t exist and/or are likely to misuse their power in office.

Quite clearly, implementation of NEP 2020 has arrived at a fork in the road. The supervisory superstructure recommended by the KR Committee and incorporated into NEP 2020 has to be jettisoned in favour of institutional autonomy also mandated by the policy. A major reason why India’s HEIs have not attained world-class standards is over-regulation by government bureaucracy and infantalisation of highly qualified and experienced educators in the majority of the country’s colleges and universities.

With media and other independent organisations and market reputation determining the progress and advancement of HEIs, institutional autonomy seems the best bet for the future of Indian higher education. Especially with the emergence of a large and growing number of private universities which are setting globally accepted standards in higher education.