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The quality check

— Photo: T. singaravelou

The way ahead: Director of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council, Bangalore, H.A. Ranganath, emphasises the role of NAAC as a facilitator.

Setting benchmarks for higher educational institutions in the country, accreditation has been gaining increasing importance over the years.

Helping institutions of higher learning not only to improve quality but also to remove the shortcomings, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore, has come a long way in its efforts to ensure quality education in India.

In an interview to EducationPlus during his visit to Pondicherry University, the Director of NAAC, Bangalore, H.A. Ranganath, spoke on the role of the council in higher education, need for accreditation for institutions, the path ahead and status of higher education in the country.

“The concept of accreditation is not new. It is already being done by the society. Today, different types of institutions are coming up and there is no information to parents, students and it is difficult to keep track of quality too. NAAC is an official organisation to do assessment and accreditation of higher education institutions. We appreciate the good things in the system and are facilitators, not an inspection team,” he asserted.

While recognising the good and novel things in institutions of higher learning, NAAC advises the institutions to take care of limitations, remove shortcomings and fill the gaps for the benefit of students, he said. “So far, NAAC has accredited 150 universities and 4,000 colleges in the country,” he pointed out.

Assessing higher educational institutions on grading criteria such as curriculum, development, admission and examination procedures, he said, “Till now, we have been following institutional accreditation. At some time later, thematic or discipline-oriented accreditation has to be done.”

For instance, 25 departments out of 50 departments in a university might be doing extraordinarily well, but the accreditation comes in for the university.

“Hereafter, at some stage, the country has to do thematic, faculty and discipline-oriented accreditation so that we can say which department is doing exceedingly well in a particular institution. This is already happening in the United Kingdom. Such discussions are there now in India,” he observed.

Going a step further, there are plans to introduce online accreditation as in South Africa.

“People need not physically come to the university. We can evolve a procedure to enable online accreditation. This is yet to be finalised,” Professor Ranganath said.

In fact, there are changes even in the follow-up procedures after accreditation of institutions.

“Once accreditation is done, the university should establish an internal quality assurance cell and send annual reports to NAAC. At the end of five years, it applies for re-accreditation. But now, the University Grants Commission is thinking of making colleges and universities set up the cell earlier and not wait for accreditation to be done.” Following the internal quality assurance cell, an academic and administration audit comes in which carries out a very stringent assessment. “Now, institutions require ‘A’ grade accreditation for obtaining grants. There are various things attached to accreditation now,” he said.With higher education evolving in the country, he said the challenges should be taken up.

“Students go abroad after completing Ph.D. for post-doctoral studies. The retention capacity is low and this has to be enhanced. The post-doctoral culture has to be emphasised in India, otherwise we are just local heroes.”

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