JAMMU: In a major reformative step, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has dispensed with the practice of grading system of higher educational institutes (HEIs) in the country.
Announcing the significant decision, the NAAC authority asserted that the grading has been replaced with a new process of binary accreditation where in HEIs will be tagged as “accredited” or “still-to-be accredited”.
Though the NAAC authorities maintained that the new system has been adopted to ensure fair play in assessment of HEIs, sources in NAAC said, “The decision was taken in the backdrop of allegations of corruption and undesired practices that had intruded deep into the current system of accreditation”.
In addition to binary accreditation, NAAC has also introduced maturity-based graded accreditation to encourage institutions to continuously improve which includes promotion from “level 1 to 4” as “Institutions of National Excellence”, and eventually to “level 5” as “Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education”.
It is worthwhile to mention here that alarmed over massive criticism in the media, Union Education Ministry has constituted a committee headed by former ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan to suggest measures for eliminating loopholes and strengthening assessment and accreditation of HEIs.
The current system of NAAC grading where mad race for fetching A++, A+ ranking sans strong academic parameters had become the buzz word leading to roping in of self styled middle men leading to academic disasters and financial mess in the HEIs. This was not the purpose of establishing NAAC in the country, says a senior teacher of GCW Gandhi Nagar.
Recently, a college has attained A++ ranking sans any commendable academic achievements which has raised eye brows among the educational paraphernalia and stake holders and there is much more that meets the eye, avers another teacher.
The new accreditation system is based on One Nation One Data platform which will consolidate data from HEIs with an in-built design for collateral cross-checking to ensure data authenticity submitted in the shape of SSR by the colleges besides least visits to an institution for verification.