Associated Press stakeholders say

Views from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) campus. Photos for representational purposes only | Image source: Hindu

The scandal involving the Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation (KLEF) in Andhra Pradesh has prompted significant changes to the scoring agency as part of a bribe to the National Assessment and Accreditation Commission (NAAC).

The NAAC plans to conduct physical data verification practices through expert groups based on recommendations from the Radhakrishnan committee report submitted last year.

Andhra Pradesh, where stakeholders surfaced in the bribery scam, acknowledged that it provided a “universal culture” to the inspection team of accredited agencies.

NAAC team members and institutions of higher education bypass rules provide “high hospitality” which includes organizing special events, scheduling sightseeing and, most importantly, providing gifts to inspection teams for favorable rankings.

“It has become a necessary evil and everyone is forced to entertain this because of fear of losing the match in ranking competitions,” a former office teacher at Andhra Pradesh Private Engineering Institute Management Association. He said only the size of preference varies from institution to institution.

Some members of the association believe that Clive turned a customary gift (often considered a gesture of goodwill) into a tool of corruption. However, regardless of the scale of the violation, it is possible to be sure that providing gifts intended to influence decision-making and gain advantages is a common practice.

The bribery incident has damaged the image of NAAC because the person arrested in this case is a member of Clive’s highest brass and certification body, including a professor from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“The NAAC scam considered to be a university in KL highlights the key needs of educational institutions to uphold ethical practices and requires certification bodies to implement strict supervision to maintain the integrity of academic standards,” said Rao, general secretary of the All India Alliance Self-established Technology Institutions Alliance.

He said that similar to KL University’s NAAC inspection, most regulatory inspections usually become formalities and are subject to manipulation results by external factors.

Mr Rao filed several complaints against the central and state governments, statutory, regulatory and investigative agencies, which drew their attention to violations and lacked supervision when granting educational institutions higher status in the absence of compliance with norms.

Despite the emphasis in the Gazette Gazette Notice (No. 9-48/2005-U.3, dated 27-07-2023), the institution claimed to be second in the 25 range in the university category and “nearly 85 in the engineering category”.

“This has attracted serious concerns about the credibility and integrity of the NIRF rankings, which are considered the benchmark for quality assessments,” he said.

He cites examples of two other institutions that are given private university status, which he says have no land, buildings or proper infrastructure.

“One of them is operated by a now-closed rental building of just 30,000 square feet, but it still exists only on paper and is still listed in approved private universities maintained by UGC,” he said.

He said his serious violations of the statutory norms that grant private university status were regarded as a university identity, certification and autonomy by various regulators, which attracted attention to the statutory norms, which he said led to the commercialization of education and seriously damaged the small affiliated colleges.