Self-financed colleges have always articulated their feeling of being left out of the accreditation process. Though NAAC chairman V.S. Chauhan said colleges have the freedom and are considered mature enough to self-assess their performance, professors say the assurance discourages them from pursuing accreditation.
According to C.R. Ravi, former principal of A.M. Jain College, though 60% of colleges from the State have applied for accreditation, only aided and government colleges would benefit from funding for research projects.
Mr. Chauhan said accreditation would not be the criterion for grant of funds but assessment of the colleges’ performance and their grading by the council could influence funding agencies. Even the proposed possibility of programme assessment in colleges and universities by NAAC and University Grants Commission has not appeased them.
“Mostly the funding will be for aided and government institutions and not for self-financed institutions. They have no idea how to go about accreditation either,” says M. Venkatramanan, principal of Shree Chandraprabhu Jain College, a self-financed institution in Minjur.
“My college wants to go for accreditation. They also want to become an institution with permanent affiliation (with the university) and become an aided institution. UGC imposes certain conditions before funding is granted to self-financing institutions. A teacher may have put in 10 years of service but she may be required to enter an agreement with the college to continue in service for the period of the project,” he says.