Education is a racket. Or at least, the version of it being sold out of one-room offices in Delhi and dusty storefronts in Uttar Pradesh certainly is.

Every year, like a depressing clockwork mechanism, the University Grants Commission (UGC) wakes up from its bureaucratic slumber to tell us what we already know: people are still getting fleeced. The 2026 list of blacklisted institutions is out. It’s a 29-item roster of academic hallucinations. These are "universities" in the same way a cardboard box is a penthouse. They have the names, the gold-leaf logos, and the stock photos of smiling graduates in polyester gowns. What they don’t have is the legal right to exist.

Delhi is leading the pack again. It’s the undisputed capital of the degree-mill industrial complex, boasting eight of these fraudulent hubs. Uttar Pradesh follows closely behind with four. The rest are scattered across the map, from the back alleys of West Bengal to the coastal traps of Maharashtra.

The list itself is a masterclass in linguistic plagiarism. These places love words like "National," "Indian," and "Academy." They’re designed to look just legitimate enough to fool a desperate parent or a student who didn’t get into a Tier-1 college and is looking for a shortcut. But these shortcuts lead straight into a brick wall.

Here’s the friction: the UGC Act of 1956 is a blunt, rusted instrument. It gives the commission the power to "name and shame," but very little power to actually lock the doors. We’re fighting a 2026 problem with 1950s paperwork. By the time the UGC adds a name to the list, the "Vice Chancellor" has usually already shuttered the office, moved three blocks down, and rebranded as a "Global Institute of Digital Excellence."

It’s a low-effort, high-reward grift. You don't need a campus. You don't need a faculty. You just need a GoDaddy subscription and a decent SEO strategy. In fact, many of these fake university websites look significantly better than the actual UGC website. They’re snappy. They have chatbots. They offer "fast-track degrees" for a cool 75,000 rupees. It’s a retail experience. You aren't buying an education; you’re buying a PDF that looks good on a LinkedIn profile until an HR bot runs a background check.

The tragedy isn't the scam itself—scams are a constant. The tragedy is the market that sustains them. India’s obsession with the "degree" as a commodity, rather than education as a process, has created a vacuum. We have millions of kids terrified of being left behind in a job market that demands credentials for even the most basic entry-level roles. If you can't get into a real school, and you can't afford a private one, that 20,000-rupee diploma from a "National University" in a North Delhi basement starts looking like a lifeline.

The trade-off is brutal. A student spends two years and their family’s savings on a piece of paper that isn't worth the ink used to print the fake holographic seal. When they try to apply for a government job or a visa, the system spits them out. They aren't just broke; they’re unverified. They don't exist in the eyes of the state.

The UGC says these 29 institutions have no right to confer degrees. They’ve issued the warnings. They’ve sent the letters. They’ve updated the PDFs. But the digital ghost of these colleges lives on in cached search results and frantic WhatsApp groups.

We keep seeing the same names, or slight variations of them, year after year. The Commercial University Ltd. in Daryaganj. The United Nations University in Delhi—which, let’s be honest, should be a red flag for anyone with a working brain, but hope is a powerful hallucinogen.

The 2026 list is a map of our collective failure to regulate a sector that treats students like clicks in a funnel. We can keep publishing these blacklists until the heat death of the universe. We can warn people until we’re blue in the face. But as long as the demand for a cheap, fast credential outweighs the supply of actual, affordable seats in real classrooms, the grifters will keep the lights on.

It makes you wonder: if the UGC knows exactly where these 29 offices are located, why is the 2027 list already writing itself?