Focus to be on new challenges emerging from Diverse Institutions.
The country’s premier rating body for academic institutions,
National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), will release on April 1st,
a new set of manuals and methodologies for assessment and rating of higher education
institutions (HEIs) based on the diverse objectives of their functioning. “As of
now, we have a single manual for all types of institutions, but it is not adequate
to address the challenges emerging from the newer types of HEIs”, NAAC Director
H. A. Ranganath, said on 24th Friday. The new set of manuals and methodologies will
take care of this shortcoming, he added. Ranganath said; the basic seven criteria
for assessment of HEIs relating to teaching and learning, curriculum development,
research and development, infrastructure, management and social responsibility will
remain the same. “However, newer elements concerning promotion and funding of research;
autonomy to principal investigators of research projects; publications; consultancy
and university-to-university as well as international collaborations, among others,
will be incorporated”, he added.
The higher education sector is evolving faster
than any other sector in the country as several new types of institutions with diverse
goals and objectives are set to come up in the near future, he said. “As of August
2011, India had 611 universities and 30,000-odd colleges, he pointed out. The diversity
of these institutions can be gauged from the fact that there are state and central
universities; deemed and private universities; Indian Institutes of technology (IITs),
management (IIMs) and science and education research (IISER)”, he said. “The Council
for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is to set up a UNESCO-funded biotechnology
institute in New Delhi, while the department of biotechnology-funded institutes,
innovation universities, varsities funded by Indian corporate majors and foreign
education providers are to mark their presence in the near future. We need to have
appropriate methods for assessing these institutions”, Ranganath said.
Asked whether
NAAC was content with the prevailing limited response from the HEIs to its accreditation
initiatives, considering that the rating is not mandatory, Ranganath said that “the
human resource development (HRD) ministries bill for an independent regulatory authority
for assessment and accreditation has been cleared by a Parliamentary standing committee
and is expected to be passed by Parliament soon”. The bill makes it mandatory for
all the HEIs, which attain eligibility for assessment and accreditation, to get
them selves rated by authorised licensed agencies, he said. The NAAC will continue
to function under the authority but, assessing the existing huge network of HEIs
remains a gigantic task, which the council alone cannot do, he added. Ranganath
said, “The bill provides for licensing of credible agencies, which will undertake
assessment and rating task. The functioning of these agencies will be monitored
by way of an in-built mechanism under the new regulatory authority”.
Courtesy: Times of India
