The demise of India’s journal whitelist highlights regulatory challenges

The Indian government’s recently released Economic Survey 2024-25 confirms the rapid expansion that Indian higher education has undergone over the past decade.

The report reveals that the total number of higher education institutions increased by nearly 14 per cent between 2014-15 and 2022-23, reaching 58,643. The number of universities alone increased by almost 68 per cent during those eight years, from 723 to 1,213. And the number of students rose 30 per cent to 44.6 million. That expansion will only exacerbate the difficulty that has always existed in regulating and managing India’s vast system.

There is broad consensus that over-regulation, rather than under-regulation, is the problem. The National Education Policy 2020, for instance, recognised that the “regulation of higher education has been too heavy-handed” and that “too much has been attempted to be regulated with too little effect.” It noted that the “regulatory system is in need of a complete overhaul” and recommended that regulation be made “light but tight”.

In a similar vein, the Economic Survey 2024-25 calls for regulation that enables and ensures “transparency of key aspects in the functioning of a university such as finances, procedures, infrastructure, and faculty.” That is all data that universities maintain for themselves, but they often misreport it in public and to the government to show themselves in a good light.

But past and current governments have ignored the deregulation recommendations contained in multiple such self-commissioned reports. And it is not certain that less regulation really is the best way forward.

Two examples from recent weeks give a glimpse of the kind of regulatory challenges that Indian higher education faces and why there are no easy answers to finding the right balance between excessive regulation and less regulation.

First, earlier this month, members of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) inspection committee were arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in a bribery case. The NAAC is an autonomous government body responsible for assessing colleges and universities and awards them different grades on the basis of multiple criteria, such as teaching, research, management, infrastructure and others. NAAC grades are displayed prominently by higher education institutions and, in principle, they help students make informed choices about which colleges or universities to apply to. The committee members – who included professors – allegedly accepted money from a private university in the state of Andhra Pradesh in return for giving it high grades.

Nor was this the first blot on the NAAC’s record. In February 2023, the NAAC’s then chairperson, Bhushan Patwardhan, alleged manipulation of the accreditation process, resulting in the awarding of questionable grades to some institutions. An inquiry that he convened in 2022 had found that the council’s IT system was compromised and assessors were appointed on an arbitrary basis. Days after making his allegations public, Patwardhan resigned, “to safeguard self-respect and the sanctity of the post of chairman…and the NAAC”.

The second case involves a recent decision by the University Grants Commission (UGC) – India’s main regulatory body for higher education – to scrap a standard list of legitimate journals it created and maintained to help academics publish their research in credible sources. According to a UGC official, “It was felt that universities are best suited to decide on which publications to follow.”

The UGC started maintaining the so-called Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE) list of journals in 2018 to help researchers distinguish between legitimate and predatory journals. This was after it became common knowledge that faculty across India were publishing widely in predatory journals to boost their publication metrics and, thereby, win promotions. Although there were criticisms of the UGC list in terms of what was included or excluded, it had become a useful go-to reference.

This case represents an example of deregulation that will hurt rather than benefit the cause of research in India. In drawing up the CARE List, the UGC had relied on suggestions by universities. However, following reports that the suggestions included predatory publications, UGC officials verified the list and culled thousands of dubious journals from it.

This, unlike the NCAA case, is an example of a regulator doing a good job. There is no rationale for letting universities choose their own publication venues once again.

The two cases discussed here give a fair indication of the patchy regulatory environment that India’s higher education institutions inhabit, with some bodies failing in their mandates and others doing a good job on certain things.

They also illustrate why the question of whether more or less regulation is needed should be preceded by the question of how high-quality regulation can be ensured. But, on that, there are no easy answers.

Pushkar is director of the International Centre Goa.