The Executive Committee of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) on Saturday decided to bring in major reforms in its accreditation process. In the first stage, a “binary accreditation system” will be implemented in the next four weeks, which will replace the present system of ranking (C to A++) of higher education institution (HEIs).
According to the NAAC, the new binary accreditation system is in line with the best practices followed globally. The NAAC said in a release that rather than grades, the new system will encourage all the institutions to get “on-boarded” in the accreditation process, thereby creating a quality culture in the higher education system. No new applications will be accepted as per the present methodology after four months. “Institutions that have already applied and are applying in the next four months shall have the option to either go by the present process or by the new methodology of binary accreditation,” the release said.
The current system of ranking is based on the Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) gained by an institution.
The second stage of the reforms is the implementation of “Maturity based Graded Accreditation,” which will be implemented by December 2024. There will be five levels (Level 1 to 5) under this system and accredited institutions can raise their bar from ‘Level 1’ to ‘Level 4’ as Institutions of National Excellence, and then to ‘Level 5’ i.e. Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education. “The levelled accreditation shall enable Indian institutions to significantly improve their quality and position themselves among global top institutions,” the NAAC said.
The NAAC said there will be a special focus on rural and remote location institutions through mentoring and handholding. “One Nation One Data Platform has been proposed as part of the reform to ensure integrity and transparency in handling institutional data. The new platform shall capture superset of data from HEIs for varied purposes (of approval, accreditation, ranking) with an in-built design for collateral cross-checking to check authenticity of data,” the NAAC said.
The reform is based on recommendations of a panel headed by former Chairman of the ISRO K. Radhakrishnan. The panel’s brief was to propose transformative reforms for strengthening assessment and accreditation of the HEIs. The final report of the panel, incorporating feedback received from stakeholders, was presented to Union Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan on January 16. “The recommendation also focuses on mentoring and incentivising schemes for raising their participation as well as accreditation levels, towards eminence, significance and global acclaim,” the NAAC said.
“The system shall be based on Trust and Data Driven with minimal visits to an institution for verification; however, carrying heavy penalties on giving wrong submissions. In addition, there will be provision for customized ranking based on stakeholders such as industry, funding agencies, students etc.,” it added.
