A separate body, India Rankings Society, will administer the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) from the next academic year, K.K. Agarwal, Chairman, National Board of Accreditation, which has been carrying out the task over the past few years, said in Tiruchi on Thursday.
Under NIRF, the country’s higher educational institutes, including professional institutions, are ranked annually under separate categories based on a set of parameters including teaching and learning resources, research and graduation outcomes.
“The task (of ranking) was given to us temporarily as an additional work. We will have a separate ranking body in place, if not this year, definitely by the next academic year. We want to concentrate on accreditation,” Dr. Agarwal said on the sidelines of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Tamil Nadu Higher Education conclave.
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Answering a query on the complaints regarding the previous rankings, which were done on the basis of documents presented by institutions, he agreed there were issues regarding the rankings and that was one reason for creating a separate body. The number of institutions is very high as the ranking is done across colleges and universities. It was not possible to verify everything. “Some of our colleges give wrong information and do it so well that they are almost camouflaged,” Dr. Agarwal acknowledged. He added that the new society will be able to focus on these issues.
NBA accreditation
Currently about 15% of programmes (among technical institutions) were accredited by the NBA. “Being a member of the Washington Accord, we have a list of global level attributes required for the accreditation. We cannot deviate from them. We have certain baseline questions and if institutions are not ready, they do not come to us. They understand getting NBA accreditation is tough, but good,” he said. The NBA was conducting workshops to prepare the institutions to go for the accreditation, he added. He felt that the NBA will have a role to play under the New Education Policy too as accreditation has been made mandatory. “If the volume of work is very big, we might have some more accreditation agencies,” he observed
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Earlier, at the conclave, he observed that despite a felt need for industry-institute synergy, it has not happened.
Underlining the importance of bringing in changes in the system, he pointed out the concept of business and industry has changed.
Shasi Anand Sridharan, event chairman, said the CII was willing to act as a bridge between academia, industry and policy makers as the country is at the threshold of ushering in the New Education Policy.
G.V. Selvam, convenor, CII, TN Education Panel, said it was vital for higher education institutions to improve quality of education and placements and strengthen infrastructure and institute-industry interface.