HYDERABAD: At a time when higher education institutions in the State are wary of multiple agencies from which as proposed by the draft National Education Policy 2019, they will be required to get the accreditation in future, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is in the process of finalising the parameters for institutionalising the process. The NAAC now has a 100-day window to communicate the same.
Lata Pillai, the advisor for NAAC, speaking at the workshop on Accreditation, Quality Improvement and Ranking in Higher Education, organised by the Telangana State Council Of Higher Education, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), Commissionerate of Collegiate Education, on Monday, said that by 2020-22 the agency will reinvent itself and will no longer be a body that accredits institutions but one that licenses accrediting institutions.
“In 10 years there will only be binary accreditation, though initially (2020-22), both mechanisms, grading and binary, will be used and by 2030 it will only be binary accreditation. The intent is to have high-quality accreditation system in place,” she said.Detailing the role of NAAC post-National Education Policy 2019, Pillai said that “it would be to calibrate the accreditation institutions, serve as grievance redressal mechanism between the Accreditation Institutions and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)”. “NAAC would assume the role of a mentor and facilitator,” Pillai said.
“We can not ignore the large number of underperformers... cannot shut them overnight. They need to be hand-held and mentored,” she said, adding that unlike other countries where accreditation is about quality enhancement, for India it is still about quality improvement and then sustaining it.Of the 42,000 HEIs in the country, only 8,000 have been accredited so far.
‘Industry 4.0 needs education 4.0’
Stating that industry 4.0 needs education 4.0, Vijay Kumar Saraswat, a member of NITI Aayog, said that “this would be possible only when accreditation is taken into account, not just infrastructure but also learning the outcome”. Speaking at a national workshop on Accreditation, Quality Improvement and Ranking in Higher Education, he said, “While granting accreditation, don’t just look at numbers but also at the quality or impact of the papers.”
Though the overall Gross Enrolment Ration is around 25 per cent, the GER for higher education will be even lower, and steps to ensure its improvement is the major requirement, he said. While China spends $546 billion on education, India spends only $1.4 billion of its $12.5 billion finds for education on higher education. “Inadequate funding and autonomy is reflected in ranking at the global level, where not even a single HEIs features in the top 100,” he said.
Quality assessment
There are 42,000 HEIs in the country, but the NAAC has visited 12,000 and just 8,000 of them have been accredited so far. Speaking about the criticism NEP faced for proposing multiple private accreditation agencies, the advisor said that for a country as diverse as India one size fits all policy, with one huge framework that suits everyone, cannot work. She added that though data is an essential policy-relevant statistic and a diagnostic tool, looking at numbers is not sufficient.