BENGALURU: One of the country’s oldest and most sought after law schools, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU) Bengaluru, recently got a rude shock when it received a low score on an assessment by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).
The varsity now plans to appeal against the rankings. As per the grading released by the NAAC a week ago, NLSIU Bengaluru has received ‘A’ grade with a score of 3.06 under the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) system, a a score which is lower than NALSAR Hyderabad, NLU Delhi, RGNUL Patiala and NLUO Cuttack.NLSIU authorities blamed the NAAC for not having a separate manual for ranking law universities and colleges.
An official from NLSIU told The New Indian Express, “There are no specific parameters to assess or analyse law universities and institutions under the new ranking method introduced by the NAAC.” The sources from NLSIU also said that in the recent meeting of the National Law Schools consortium held at Kochi, it was decided “to work out the list of parameters for accreditation by NAAC of all law universities, law departments of other universities and law colleges”.
Meanwhile, according to sources from NAAC, even if the NLSIU asks for a re-appeal, the results will be the same as the process is 70 per cent software based and the parameters are unlikely to be tweaked for one institution.
Speaking about it Prof SC Sharma, director, NAAC said, “If anyone submits a request we would see on what basis they are requesting and try to give justice.” The current system relies heavily on a system-based assessment with 70 per cent of the process conducted online, and only 30 per cent attributed to a peer team visit.