MUMBAI: No inspector will visit college campuses to grade them. No third-party agency will validate data submitted by a college undergoing assessment. Institutes which had to meet the same uniform standards, be it in Mumbai or Meerut, Delhi or Dibrugarh, may now have different thresholds for evaluation based on location, accessibility and infrastructure in the region.
These are some of the changes proposed in the new binary system of accreditation, in which universities and colleges will have no grades but be declared either as accredited or not accredited. The new system, to be launched in Sept, is taking final shape and could be made mandatory, according to policymakers in education ministry.
National Assessment and Accreditation Council has already stopped accepting applications under the old method. Instead of official visits or data verification by third-party consultants, scores may be henceforth given as per peer reviews. A few neighbouring colleges will be picked to verify the data submitted by a college, as per the new system.
“It has been difficult to meet the inherent challenges of the system we were following thus far. Institutions want change. We want to be sensitive to the requirements of rural colleges. It is important to mainstream our rural colleges and in doing so, we are mainstreaming the youth who study there,” said NAAC director Ganesan Kannabiran.
Currently, 12,000 institutes in India have been accredited, of which 6,000 have a valid grade, which means the remaining 6,000 never applied to NAAC again after their grades expired. “Close to 60% of institutes in India are in rural and remote areas that have their own challenges; such as access to top-notch faculty, road connectivity, and industry network. We cannot look at them with the same standard framework that we have for institutes in urban areas,” added Kannabiran.
NAAC also plans to launch a programme to mentor institutes. A 24/7 helpline will be initiated to hand-hold institutes applying under the new system. Consultations have already taken place across five different parts of the country.
On Monday, NAAC held the sixth one with colleges from rural and remote areas. Each consultation has had over 1,000 participants and officials of various states have spoken at the meetings about initiatives taken to encourage accreditation.
“It is interesting that states are doing a lot to promote quality. That is the essence of binary accreditation. As India moves to becoming the third-largest economy in the world, we must enhance our social parameters too and the process of binary accreditation will ensure that certain quality threshold levels are attained,” added Kannabiran.