Is accreditation of higher education institutions an academic illusion?

I n 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.