Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, Kalady

The Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (SSUS) is a Sanskrit university in India, established in 1993 in Kalady, Kochi, Kerala, during the tenure of Education Minister E.T. Muhammed Basheer. Its foundation stone was laid by Bharathi Tirtha Mahaswamiji of the Sringeri Sharada Peetham. The university provides education in Sanskrit, other Indian and foreign languages, Social Sciences, and Fine Arts, and is accredited A+ by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the first university in Kerala and first Sanskrit university in India to achieve this grade. It operates through a main campus at Kalady and regional campuses at Thiruvananthapuram, Panmana, Ettumanoor, Tirur, Koyilandy, and Payyannur, many located in rural areas to serve disadvantaged communities; more than ninety percent of students come from economically and socially backward backgrounds, and over seventy percent are women. Academically, the university offers twenty-six PhD programmes, twenty MPhil programmes, twenty-four PG programmes, ten UG programmes, two PgD programmes, one diploma programme, and nine certificate programmes across twenty-four departments. It introduced the Choice Based Credit and Semester System in 2005 and became the first university in Kerala to implement Outcome Based Teaching, Learning and Evaluation in 2018. The University Grants Commission recognized it with 2(f) status in 1994 and 12(B) status in 2005.