Top institutes make a beeline for NAAC accreditation

Major universities and institutes in the country have flooded the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) with their request for accreditation. Nearly 3,000 applications have been received by NAAC in the course of a year.

Reports mention that the flood of requests has been mainly to receive funding under Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA). It was mentioned that it has become mandatory for government run higher education institutions to get accreditation to receive funding. Major part of the funding of government higher education institutions has been taken over by RUSA from University Grants Commission (UGC) last year.

According to reports, top institutes like Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia Delhi, School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, Anna University, Chennai, Indian Institute of Science and National Law School from Bangalore, Jadavpur University, Kolkata and Assam University, Silchar are among 2,978 others have sent their letter of intention (LoI) to the accreditation agency between January 19, 2013 to December 19, 2013.

It was also reported that this is the highest number of LoIs received by NAAC, as earlier the agency used to get anything around 800 requests annually. Region wise the highest number of applications are from east and northeast, while in as a state Bihar has the largest number of participations. The report quoted director, NAAC, professor AN Rai as saying "There has been an unprecedented rush of LoIs for this cycle of accreditation process. One of the reasons could be because accreditation has been made mandatory and also linked to funding under RUSA's provision. But it is not mandatory for all accreditations to be done by NAAC as there are plans for multiple accreditation agencies in the country."

NAAC is now looking to strengthen the headquarters in Bangalore and then decentralise the process of college level accreditation process. The headquarters would deal with the university level accreditation and training of assessors. According to Raj, they are planning five regional offices, the first to start in North and will operate from DU. The regional centres will be responsible for the assessment process - right from receiving the LoI to Institution Eligibility Qualification Assessment, followed by self study report to visit by the expert. Only the final approval of the grading will be done in Bangalore by the executive committee.

There were 109 applications from the northeast and east and northeast combined have the largest number of LoIs, which are 826. Following Bihar (280) in terms of states with largest applications are Madhya Pradesh (278), Tamil Nadu (238), Karnataka (217) and Rajasthan (193). Nine universities and nine colleges have applied from Delhi.