The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is in the process of spreading awareness of its new framework for ranking colleges and universities based on conditions prevailing in India and other Asian countries.
The exercise comes after the Council set up a National Centre for Higher Education Quality at Indian Institute of Management-Tiruchi (IIM-T) under a memorandum of undertstanding. The MoU, signed last year, envisages big data business analytics using inputs derived from over 900 universities and 45,000 colleges in India.
“Power has shifted from the West to Asia; there is no need for blind adaptation of Western parameters [of rating higher educational institutions]. The assessment must be carried out on our terms and conditions,” Director of IIM-T Bhimaraya Metri said in his address at the inaugural session of Assessors' Orientation Programme on Monday.
“Higher educational quality and national growth are linked. A land of opportunities, India is on course to assuming global leadership drawing on its strength of favourable demography reflecting in a large proportion of productive population,” Mr. Metri said.
The Revised Accreditation Framework is a unique model to lift up the standards of higher educational institutions, Jagannath Patil, Advisor, NAAC, said, echoing Mr. Metri’s view that India needs to have its own parameters for assessment and accreditation of higher educational institutions.
Under the new framework, judgment by peer team will account for only 30% of score. The remaining assessment is based on several metrics that makes the institutions work on precise parameters. The assessment will be a completely automated process wherein anonymity of people verifying data is ensured. It will, henceforth, be difficult to pre-determine grade of any institution going through the accreditation process. There will be an online student satisfaction survey. Data verification and validation will be carried out by an external agency, Mr. Patil said at a session on ‘Revised accreditation framework - An overview and work flows’.
S. Srikanta Swamy, Academic Consultant, NAAC, and Vishnukant S. Chatpalli, Adviser, NAAC, engaged the participants comprising heads of institutions and senior professors with two more sessions: ‘Role of an assessor for assessment and accreditation of higher educational institutions' and ‘ICT integration of assessment and accreditation process’.