Hyderabad: Six universities from Andhra Pradesh are among 77 universities across the country which figure in the ‘NAAC certificate defaulters’ list’ released by the University Grants Commission. The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is the country’s accreditation body for higher education.
Two Central universities, namely the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and the English and Foreign Languages University (Eflu), besides state universities — Osmania University, Andhra University and JNTU-Hyderabad — and Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth, Tirupati, the lone deemed university, figure in the list. The UGC has declared that their accreditation status is “invalid” since they failed to seek renewal of accreditation within the stipulated deadline.
Students opting for admissions in top institutions, especially in foreign countries, would be at a disadvantage if the universities are not accredited.
The accreditation of Andhra University had expired in September 2013, JNTU-Hyderabad in May 2009, OU in February 2013, Rashtriya Sanskrit Vidyapeeth in September 2008, Eflu in January 2006 and UoH in March 2013.
Though the state has 43 universities, only 12 varsities have ‘valid’ accreditation. Of them, state universities Acharya Nagarjuna University-Guntur, Kakatiya University-Warangal, Telugu University-Hyderabad, Sri Krishna-devaraya University-Anantapur, Sri Padmavathi Mahila University-Tirupati and Sri Ven-kateshwara University-Tirupati, deemed universities, namely, GITAM-Vizag, ICFAI-Hyderabad and Koneru Laxmaiah-Guntur, Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning-Anantapur — and Maulana Azad National Urdu University-Hyderabad have ‘valid’ accreditation.
The UGC had recently issued a gazette notification making accreditation mandatory for all the universities and colleges. It has threatened to stop grants from 2015 if the universities fail to seek recognition within a year.
