India’s higher education ecosystem is expanding at a pace few sectors can match. The All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2021-22 data puts a total enrolment at 4.33 crore students across 1,168 universities, 45,473 colleges, and 12,002 stand-alone institutions, with the Gross Enrolment Ratio now at 28.4 in the country. Within this base, 2.07 crore students are women, 88,000 students live with disabilities, and 46,878 international students from 170 countries are studying on Indian campuses. Scale of this order changes what inclusion means for an institution. It is no longer a value statement. It is an operating requirement.
Three forces are converging to make this explicit. First, India is positioning itself as a global education hub. The University Grants Commission of India (UGC) regulations from 2023 have opened the door for foreign universities to establish Indian campuses, introducing a new tier of competitive benchmarking. Available data shows us that 77 percent of international students globally cite inclusive campus culture as a decisive factor in choosing an institution, which means Indian institutions competing for this cohort are being measured against a standard they may not yet have codified.
Second, policy has moved from encouragement to mandate. The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 targets a Gross Enrolment Ratio of 50 percent by 2035 and requires equitable, inclusive education at every level. UGC’s Equity Regulations mandate Equal Opportunity Cells at every university. All of the mandates constitute compliance infrastructure that institutions are expected to demonstrate, not merely intend.
Third, and perhaps most significant, is what the data reveals about who is entering these institutions. Students from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities, first-generation learners, and a growing base of diverse students now make up a substantial share of enrolment. Institutions built around a narrower, more homogenous student profile are being asked to serve a population they were not originally designed for.
This is the gap the Top Inclusive Academic Institutions (TIAI) certification is built to close. TIAI is a rigorous, evidence-based accreditation that assesses institutions across four dimensions: the inclusion experience of students and staff, infrastructure and accessibility, management accountability, and the policies and practices that support diverse identities, spanning gender, persons with disabilities, LGBTQIA+ communities, socioeconomic background, and regional representation.
What distinguishes TIAI from self-assessment is its methodology. Data is drawn from three independent channels, a declarative institutional form, a student experience survey, and a staff experience survey, and reviewed by experts at Avtar against a defined maturity framework before certification is granted. The outcome is a report that gives institutions an honest, third-party mirror rather than an internally generated narrative.
The imperative is straightforward. As India scales toward its Viksit Bharat 2047 ambitions, the institutions producing its workforce and its leadership will be judged on how well they served every student who walked through their doors, not only the ones who fit an existing mould. TIAI offers institutions a structured way to measure that, close the gaps it finds, and lead on the evidence rather than the assumption.
