|
Published on:
Apr 22, 2025
Views:
40
The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), which has faced corruption allegations in the past, may remove an additional 1,200 assessors and revise the eligibility criteria to introduce a leakproof, transparent accreditation process. It would mandate that assessors be recommended by the head of an institution, among other eligibility criteria.
In February, NAAC ex-pelled 800 assessors after allegations of corruption surfaced in the grading process following a tip off from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). On April 14, the Supreme Court (SC) sought a response from the Union education ministry, UGC, and NAAC on the measures taken to ensure fair and transparent grading.
Anil Sahasrabudhe, chairman, EC National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), says that a 10-member committee was tasked with reviewing 5,000 assessors to stem the rot. "A 10-member committee was asked to scrutinise all 5,000 experts, and they have further suggested the removal of about 1,200 of them. It is a big ticket change, which is already underway," he says.
NAAC also plans to revise the eligibility criteria for appointing assessors. Previously, applications were invited through the NAAC portal, and the minimum requirement was being a professor with at least five years of experience. "Now, a recommendation from the head of the institution may be included as part of the eligibility criteria. If the recommended person is later found to lack credibility or is involved in wrongdoing, the endorser will also be subject to scrutiny, hence, no one will take the recommenda-tion lightly," Prof Sahasrabudhe says.
The 10-member committee scrutinising assessors includes members from different domains, who have been gathering information from principals, vicechancellors, and other sources, on the authenticity of assessors and the institutions they assess. The accreditation council adopted the recommendations made by the Radhakrishnan Committee to ensure transparency.
The Radhakrishnan Committee made two critical suggestions in the report submitted in 2024 eliminating grades and introducing a binary accreditation system, that is, basic accreditation for all institutions, followed by a Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation (MBGA) for well-performing institutions.
"MBGA and BAS will be launched after the system is cleaned up. For now, NAAC carefully reevalu-ates cases that raise the slightest suspicion against
assessors and institutions. For instance, if an institution gets a much higher grade when applying for the first time, it becomes a case for suspicion, on scrutiny and reevaluation, grades are reduced for such institutions."
When an institution undergoes the accreditation process for the first time, it is referred to as cycle 1 and the consecutive five-year periods as cycles 2 and 3. Suspicion arises when an institution suddenly jumps more than two grades compared to the previous cycle. Institutions are required to submit data, which is verified by NAAC and is used to generate a score. This score must tally with the score from the actual site visit to the institution. If there is a difference of more than 30%, then one of the two scores must be inaccurate, prompting further action. Reliable institutes usually have scores that closely align in both versions.
"Among all the institutions NAAC reviewed, about half continued to receive the same grade, with only minor variations in their scores. However, some Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) received one or two grades lower," says Sahasrabudhe, adding that the government is working towards building a more robust accreditation process using Al technology but that it will take time.
Published on: Education Times
Date: 22.04.2025
