PANAJI: For close to one and a half years now, Goa University (GU) is without a valid accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). The five-year validity of the last accreditation, where GU was granted ‘A’ grade, ended in September 2019.
Initially, the university deliberately delayed initiating the re-accreditation process by NAAC. This was because close to 50% posts at GU were without full-time faculty and it was felt this could bring down the varsity’s grading.
Then, by early 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived on the scene and almost eight to ten months were lost to it.
“The Goa University is currently carrying out the process of preparing its self-study report, and all the meetings are currently being held at the university. The report is expected to be submitted to NAAC within a couple of months. Around a month or so after the self-study report is submitted, NAAC will begin its assessment,” said officiating Goa University registrar Radhika Nayak, while adding that “due to the pandemic, NAAC itself had stopped visits by its experts”.
By the time, the new grade for the Goa University is announced, the state’s lone university would have gone almost two years without a valid accreditation, a rare occurrence since GU first began getting itself accredited by NAAC.
“Prior to the pandemic, on two occasions, the university was forced to withdraw its advertisements for various faculty posts, as there was some controversy over non-domiciled persons being allowed to apply for the posts. By the time the issue was resolved, lot of retirements took place over the last two years and more vacancies were created,” said a source.
The vacant teaching positions were being filled by employing faculty on contract basis, which would have greatly affected GU’s assessment by NAAC.
Since the Covid-19 situation improved in the state, GU has managed to complete the recruitment process and now almost 80-90% of the 150-odd faculty positions have been filled. A backlog of only around 30 posts in the reserved categories are now waiting to be filled.
With the recruitment issue addressed, GU officials now feel confident of bagging a higher grade at the NAAC assessment.
In 2014, GU had managed to finally improve its grade from ‘B’ to ‘A’ and, it was felt it could not risk slipping down from its current grade.
The Union ministry of education has recently altered the NAAC accreditation process and almost 70% weightage will go to quantitative aspects like the number of permanent faculty members, the qualification of faculty members, etc.