What the UGC's 2024 public self-disclosure guidelines ask a college website to publish, with the NIRF, AICTE and RTI pages it also needs, set out as a sitemap.
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Drafted with AI tools; researched, edited and approved by Althameem Ali. Our editorial policy
On this page · 10 sections
- What do the UGC public self-disclosure guidelines require?
- Which pages should a college website carry under the UGC list?
- Why should NIRF data be on the college website?
- What does AICTE's mandatory disclosure add for technical programmes?
- Do aided and government colleges in Kerala have RTI disclosures too?
- How should fees, refunds and the prospectus appear?
- How do you keep disclosures current without breaking the site?
- What happens to institutions that do not disclose?
- What does a disclosure-ready college website cost with us?
- Where to start
This post is for the principal, the IQAC coordinator or the college office working out what the website has to carry. It is a reading of the published documents, not legal advice: each rule links to its source, read on 28 October 2026, and how it applies to your college is for your management and your affiliating university to confirm.
What do the UGC public self-disclosure guidelines require?#
The UGC's guidelines page (opens in a new tab) lists the Guidelines on Public Self-Disclosure by Higher Education Institutions, 2024, dated 11 June 2024. Careers360 reported (opens in a new tab) the same day that the Commission approved them at its 580th meeting, on 15 May.
The guidelines themselves (opens in a new tab) (UGC, three pages) are short, and two paragraphs matter for the website:
- Paragraph 4 is a "shall". Every higher education institution shall maintain a functional website for self-disclosure to its stakeholders. The disclosures must be open "without any requirement of log-in/registration", and the site shall have a "Search" facility.
- Paragraph 5 is a "may". Institutions may publish information under ten headings, lettered a to j, and give links wherever possible.
So the working website, open access and search are the firm part. The ten headings are written as guidance, but they are the list anyone checking your site will read against, so we treat them as the checklist. The document covers colleges as well as universities: it asks for the Principal "wherever applicable" and the affiliating university "in case of colleges", which is the position of most arts and science colleges in Kerala.
Which pages should a college website carry under the UGC list?#
Here is every heading in the guidelines, with what it lists and the page we would build for it.
The Internal Complaint Committee appears under two headings, so build one committee page and link it from both. Students and parents look for the grievance, anti-ragging and equal opportunity pages, so put them in every page's footer.
Why should NIRF data be on the college website?#
Because the ranking process expects it to be public. In a March 2024 notice (opens in a new tab) (National Institutional Ranking Framework, read 28 October 2026), NIRF said the data institutions submitted for India Rankings 2024 had been hosted by the participating institutions on their own websites, invited stakeholders to comment on that data from 15 to 26 March 2024, and noted that the responsibility and accountability for the data rest entirely with the institution.
The common pattern, and the one we build, is a page reached from a link labelled "NIRF" on the homepage, with each year's submission kept on it. The College of Engineering Trivandrum's NIRF page (opens in a new tab) is a public example, listing every year from 2020 to 2025. Check the instructions that come with your NIRF registration for the current cycle.
What does AICTE's mandatory disclosure add for technical programmes?#
If the college runs AICTE-approved programmes, such as engineering, MBA or MCA, AICTE adds its own list. AICTE's corrigendum of 14 May 2026 to the College of Engineering Trivandrum's 2026-27 extension of approval, which the college publishes on its website (opens in a new tab), cites the mandatory disclosure in Annexure 18 of AICTE's Approval Process Handbook 2024-27. It says institutions must disclose the information submitted to AICTE at a prominent location on their website:
- department-wise infrastructure, with the approved courses and the intake AICTE approved;
- faculty details by department: name, designation, qualification, tenure in the institution and total experience, plus the student-faculty ratio and the cadre ratio;
- audited financial statements for the last three financial years.
On the website this becomes a "Mandatory Disclosure" page linked from the homepage, with the approval letters filed by year beside it. AICTE's own site was unreachable when we checked on 28 October 2026, so read the current handbook on aicte-india.org (opens in a new tab) for the full annexure before you sign off the page.
Do aided and government colleges in Kerala have RTI disclosures too?#
Often, yes, but it depends on whether the college is a "public authority". Under Section 2(h) of the Right to Information Act, 2005 (opens in a new tab) (Department of Personnel and Training), that includes bodies owned, controlled or substantially financed by the government, and non-government organisations substantially financed, directly or indirectly, by government funds.
A government college is clearly covered. An aided college may well be, since it runs on government grants. A self-financing college generally is not, unless it is government-funded in some way. That call is for your management and a lawyer, not for a web team.
Where the Act applies, Section 4(1)(b) asks the public authority to publish a set list of information about itself and to update it every year; Section 4(2) asks it to keep disclosing proactively, including through the internet; and Section 4(3) says the information must be easily accessible. On a college website that means an /rti page naming the Public Information Officer and the appellate authority, which the UGC list already asks for "wherever applicable", plus the Section 4(1)(b) documents with the year they were last updated.
How should fees, refunds and the prospectus appear?#
The UGC asks for a prospectus with the fee structure for each programme, the admission process and the fee refund policy.
- Fees as a table on a web page, not only inside a PDF. One row per programme, with the tuition fee per year and every other charge listed: exam, caution deposit, hostel, bus. A PDF prospectus can sit beside it for download.
- The refund policy on its own page, linked from the fee table and the admissions page, with the dates and percentages in text the site search can find.
- The prospectus as a dated document, with last year's version moved to an archive rather than deleted.
- The admission process as steps with dates, so a student can see what is open now.
Our concept build for Ilanchira College of Arts and Science shows this working. It is a fictional college in Kochi and a concept build, not a client: a programme index of 18 programmes with filters and search, an admissions timeline that marks each step as upcoming, open now or closed from today's date, a fee table that switches between per year and the whole course, a documents checklist and a filterable notices section. It also keeps an empty panel for the affiliation and approvals, which a real college would fill with its own university, NAAC and AICTE details.
How do you keep disclosures current without breaking the site?#
Disclosures usually go stale because they live as scanned PDFs that only the site's builder can replace. What works for us:
Two related jobs sit next to this. Enquiry and grievance forms collect students' personal data, so read our DPDP compliance checklist before they go live. And if the disclosures come as part of a rebuild, the website redesign SEO checklist covers redirects and keeping your search rankings.
What happens to institutions that do not disclose?#
The UGC has started naming them. In September 2025 Careers360 reported (opens in a new tab) that the UGC had identified 54 state private universities, across 18 states, that had not submitted information under Section 13 of the UGC Act, 1956, or had not uploaded their public self-disclosure on their websites. The UGC had told them to put the filled-in format and its appendices on their websites with a link on the home page, followed up with reminders by email and online meetings, and asked them to comply immediately. No Kerala institution was on that list, and colleges were not its subject, but it shows the website is now part of how the regulator checks an institution.
Students and parents read the same site, and a missing refund policy or an anti-ragging page with last year's names says something before anyone visits the campus.
What does a disclosure-ready college website cost with us?#
From our published prices: a business website starts from ₹60,000 for up to 8 pages, with each further page at ₹5,000, and a Next.js website with a headless CMS starts from ₹2 lakh for up to 15 pages. Ongoing upkeep through our website care plan starts from ₹3,000 a month, billed yearly. All prices are before GST (18%).
The sitemap above runs well past 8 pages and the office must edit it without a developer, so a disclosure-complete college site usually needs the CMS tier. We quote it on the page count once we have your list of programmes, committees and documents.
Where to start#
Print the UGC table above, tick what your site already has, and note who owns each gap: that list is most of the brief. For how the site then brings in admissions, our guides to digital marketing for colleges and SEO for educational institutions pick up from here, and our education page shows what else we do for colleges and schools. For our own SEO work in education, see the Clarix case study.
If you would like us to map your current site against the UGC, NIRF, AICTE and RTI lists and quote the rebuild, tell us about your college.
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Written by
Co-founder, Marketlube
Althameem Ali researched, edited and approved this post. Marketlube is a growth partner in Calicut building brands, websites, CRMs and campaigns for businesses across Kerala, India and the Gulf.
