Even as India¡¯s universities continue to register quality improvements, they also face a credibility crisis stemming from multiple cases of corruption, research fraud and misinformation involving administrators and faculty. Worryingly, government organisations tasked with exposing unethical practices and penalising violators appear to have themselves become part of the problem.

This March, in response to a public interest litigation (PIL) petition, the restrained the Ministry of Education and the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) from publishing the rankings for 2025. Launched by the NBA in 2016 under the Ministry of Education, NIRF rankings are considered to be more reliable indicators of university quality than the rankings prepared by many of India¡¯s leading news?publications?because of the conflict of interest arising from the fact that they benefit financially from advertisements by the same private universities whom they assess and rank.

The petitioner, C. Chellamuthu, claimed that NIRF rankings lack any justifiable basis since the NBA obtains data on many parameters, such as student and staff numbers, research and funding, from the universities themselves and does not verify the information. Many institutions submit false data to boost their rankings in order to attract students. Chellamuthu sought an intervention by the courts to require the NBA to disclose its evaluation methods and to publish NIRF rankings only after comparing and verifying the data submitted by universities with data available in government records.

NIRF rankings have been previously ?but the PIL is a fresh salvo that?casts doubt on the and raises questions about the actual quality of education they offer.

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Interestingly, the petitioner contrasted the NIRF rankings with the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous government body that assesses higher education institutions and awards them different??on the basis of multiple criteria, such as teaching, research, management and infrastructure.

Much like NIRF rankings, NAAC grades are generally considered to be reliable by students, who use them to decide which colleges or universities to attend. Unlike NBA, however, NAAC appoints and sends expert committees to the universities to verify the information submitted by them, after which it makes a call on the institution¡¯s quality.

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However, even NAAC grades are not above suspicions of corruption. In February, members of one of its inspection committees were after allegedly accepting money from a private university in return for giving it high grades.

Nor is this the first time that the NAAC has given . According to in February, the council has recently fired 900 of the 5,000 or so assessors it had on its roster. It is speculated that in many cases this was because the assessors were known to have carried out unfair assessments. However, the NAAC has not withdrawn the tainted grades already awarded to the universities in question.

Growing research fraud is another problem area that is hurting the credibility of India¡¯s universities. In a recent newspaper article, Gautam R. Desiraju, a professor emeritus at the Indian Institute of Science, and?Mirle Surappa, a senior scientist at the Indian National Science Academy,?wrote that India is??a ¡°cancerous growth of downright fraud and unethical practices¡±.

Observers have noted an , putting India among the leaders for retractions. , for instance, is a common and longstanding problem in India. Yet the problem of misconduct is not acknowledged, either by the universities or government regulatory bodies.

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Not all those retractions are a result of misconduct, of course: some flawed papers simply arise from shoddy practice. India has vastly increased in recent years but many of these extra papers are of?, especially those produced by private universities.

Not that quality is a concern of predatory journals, publishing in which is in India. To address this, the University Grants Commission (UGC) created the Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics list?of journals in 2018 to distinguish between legitimate and predatory journals.?However, the UGC recently scrapped the list. This will probably lead to another explosion of publishing in predatory journals and further drive down quality.

In sum, neither NIRF rankings nor NAAC assessments can be fully trusted. NIRF rankings are based on unverified information submitted by universities and NAAC grades may, in more than a few cases, be influenced by bribery. And research fraud gets a pass in both NIRF rankings and NAAC assessments.

If Indian universities and politicians really want to improve the credibility of the country¡¯s higher education sector, they can¡¯t go on ignoring such gaping holes in quality assurance.

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Pushkar is director of the International Centre Goa.