What NAAC accreditation says about Indian higher education
Built from NAAC’s public accreditation register (data as of 14 August 2025). Public data throughout: no Avanti student data and no personally identifiable information.
NAAC register scraped 2025-08-14. August 2026.
NAAC data only. No NIRF, no AISHE, no AICTE, no PLFS. Every number here comes from NAAC’s own accreditation register and every rate is one NAAC number over another. How much of the sector NAAC covers, and how its grades line up against any other ranking, are separate later pieces — leaving them out is what lets this one be read on its own terms.
7,566 colleges and 497 universities, each with a CGPA on a 0–4 scale, a letter grade, the number of accreditation rounds it has completed, and the date its current accreditation was declared.
The register
Section titled “The register”| Colleges | Universities | |
|---|---|---|
| Institutions | 7,566 | 497 |
| Mean CGPA | 2.67 | 3.05 |
| A or better | 27.8% | 63.0% |
| A++ | 2.9% | 16.9% |
| On their first cycle | 44.7% | 43.5% |
| Accreditation already expired | 5.4% | 3.2% |
Four things this shows
Section titled “Four things this shows”1. The typical accredited college is a B
Section titled “1. The typical accredited college is a B”Not a B+, not an A. B is the modal grade at 27.4%, and the mean CGPA of 2.67 sits inside the B+ band. Only 2.9% of colleges hold A++.
| Grade | CGPA band | Colleges | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| A++ | 3.51–3.83 | 216 | 2.85% |
| A+ | 3.26–3.50 | 654 | 8.64% |
| A | 3.01–3.25 | 1,230 | 16.26% |
| B++ | 2.76–3.00 | 1,306 | 17.26% |
| B+ | 2.51–2.75 | 1,390 | 18.37% |
| B | 2.01–2.50 | 2,070 | 27.36% |
| C | 1.51–2.00 | 700 | 9.25% |
Read against the way NAAC grades are used in prospectuses — where “NAAC accredited” is the claim and the grade is the fine print — the distribution is worth stating plainly: an A grade puts a college in the top quarter, and A++ in the top thirtieth.
2. Universities score much higher than colleges, and it is not close
Section titled “2. Universities score much higher than colleges, and it is not close”Mean CGPA 3.05 against 2.67. 63.0% of universities are A or better against 27.8% of colleges, and 16.9% are A++ against 2.9%.
These are different populations rather than a ranking of one against the other — a university awards degrees, a college is affiliated to one, and no institution appears in both lists. But the gap is large enough to matter for anyone reading a grade without noticing which register it came from.
3. The grade tells you nothing the CGPA does not
Section titled “3. The grade tells you nothing the CGPA does not”Grade is a deterministic function of CGPA: A++ at 3.51 and above, A+ at 3.26, A at 3.01, B++ at 2.76, B+ at 2.51, B at 2.01, C at 1.51.
Checked against every row: zero of 7,566 colleges carry a grade that differs from the band their CGPA falls in. So “a good grade despite a modest CGPA” cannot occur, grouping by grade and by CGPA band are the same operation, and the two should never be presented as independent evidence.
4. The lower the grade, the more likely the accreditation has quietly lapsed
Section titled “4. The lower the grade, the more likely the accreditation has quietly lapsed”This is the sharpest thing in the register, and it runs monotonically across all seven grades.
| Grade | Colleges | Accreditation already expired |
|---|---|---|
| A++ | 216 | 1.85% |
| A+ | 654 | 1.99% |
| A | 1,230 | 2.68% |
| B++ | 1,306 | 2.91% |
| B+ | 1,390 | 4.68% |
| B | 2,070 | 6.81% |
| C | 700 | 16.00% |
A C-grade college is nearly nine times as likely to be sitting on an expired accreditation as an A++ one. NAAC accreditation runs five years; these are institutions past that point on a file published as institutions with valid accreditation.
The natural reading is that colleges which scored badly do not come back for the next cycle — so the register is slowly purging its own bottom, and any snapshot of it is therefore better than the sector it is drawn from. That is a caution about the numbers above, not a separate finding.
Consistent with it: 44.7% of colleges are on their first cycle, and CGPA rises with each round — 2.53 at cycle 1 to 3.03 at cycle 4 or more. Whether that is institutions improving or weak ones dropping out cannot be separated in a snapshot with no history.
What this analysis is not
Section titled “What this analysis is not”It is not coverage. 7,566 accredited colleges is a fraction of India’s colleges. What fraction, and what the unaccredited remainder looks like, needs AISHE and is deliberately not here.
It is not a quality measure that can be compared to NIRF. Different criteria, different populations, different purposes. A join between the two is a later, separate piece.
It is a snapshot with no history. Every field is prefixed current_ for a reason: the file is
one scrape, dated 2025-08-14. No trend can be computed from it and none is attempted. “Cycle 4”
tells you an institution has been through four rounds, not what it scored in the earlier three.
The transition-autonomous list is excluded. 290 colleges moving to autonomous status hold extended validity and no CGPA or grade at all. They are neither ungraded failures nor graded successes, so they belong in neither the numerator nor the denominator of anything here.
| File | What |
|---|---|
METHOD.md |
Every decision, the three traps in the source, and what is still open |
extract.sql |
The one extract — grade, cycle and validity distributions for both registers |
check_notes.py |
Verifies every published figure and every comparative claim; exits 1 on mismatch |
bq query --use_legacy_sql=false --format=csv --max_rows=100000 \ < extract.sql > output/naac_distribution.csvpython3 check_notes.py