GS Paper II

News Excerpt:

Recently, an overarching Committee was set up by the D/o Higher Education, Ministry of Education to strengthen the assessment and accreditation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

HEIs: Higher education is tertiary education, leading to the award of an academic degree. It comprises a component of post-secondary, third-level, or tertiary education and is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completing secondary education.

What is Accreditation in HIEs?

Higher education accreditation is a quality assurance process under which services and operations of post-secondary educational institutions or programs are evaluated to determine if applicable standards are met. If standards are met, accredited status is granted by the agency.

The Benefits of Accreditation for Higher Education Institutions in India:

Why does the Present system of Accreditation need changes?

• Changing Student Expectations.
• A renewed emphasis on research quality and innovation.
• Burgeoning global collaborations, a fervent desire for international recognition and intense competition in the academic sector among public and private players.
• This need for change is fuelled by accrediting bodies and ranking entities like NAAC, NBA, NIRF, UGC and AICTE, which wield substantial influence.

About the Overarching Committee:

• This overarching committee was set up on 3rd November 2022 by the Ministry of Education.
• The committee is chaired by K Radhakrishnan, chairman of IIT’s Kanpur Board of Governors.
• The report's title is ‘Transformative Reforms for Strengthening Periodic Assessment and Accreditation for All Higher Education in India’.
• The Aim/Objectives of the Committee:
  • To strengthen the accreditation processes by NAAC and the ranking system by NIRF,
  • To recommend how more institutions come into the fold of accreditation, and
  • To prepare a roadmap for aligning NAAC, NBA, and NIRF to the proposed National Accreditation Council (NAC) in HECI.

Transformative reforms proposed now for India’s HEI-accreditation system conforming to NEP 2020:

• One Nation One Data Model: The development of the One Nation One Data (ONOD) Portal aims at establishing a unified data architecture for augmenting the efficiency and transparency of the Approval and Accreditation and Ranking processes of Higher Education Institutions in the country. It will also help reduce the time spent on HEIs collecting data and information.
• Transition from the present 8-point grading system of NAAC to an ‘Adapted Binary Accreditation System’ is proposed, HEIs are awarded eight types of letter grades viz. A++, A+, A, B++, B+, B, C and D as per NAAC.There are two sub-divisions in the non-accredited category, as given below.

• Amalgamate Programme-Accreditation and Institution- Accreditation, considering their inter-dependency; and evolve a Composite Assessment System (with due compliance to the accepted conditions of the Washington Accord).
• Enable Choice-based Ranking System for Diverse Users: Mentor the Institutions falling ‘far below the standards for accreditation’.HEIs from the accredited group may be encouraged to become mentors, with suitable credit given during their re-accreditation.
• Encourage accredited Institutions to raise their bar gradually to
  • ‘Level 1’ to ‘Level 4’ of Institutes of National Excellence (moving up as they evolve ‘in-depth in their disciplines’ and/or in-breadth in disciplines)
  • ‘Level-5’ for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Educational Institutions of global standing (as envisioned in NEP 2020)

This classification could be a necessary condition for graded autonomy.

• Include all HEIs and every programme in the newly proposed assessment and accreditation system, with due regard for their statutory dispensations (e.g. IITs): The process of encouraging IITs to migrate from their internal peer review system to an appropriate national accreditation system is on the anvil.
• Initiate a robust outreach mechanism with effective methods of handholding the potential entrants (the large majority now), where the aim should be to facilitate all HEIs in the country towards joining the accreditation process and ranking as soon as possible.

Concerns:

• There have been concerns about the low willingness of HEIs to volunteer for the assessment and accreditation process besides the cumbersome, all-encompassing information requirements (much of which may not be completely applicable for diverse categories of HEIs).
• Allocation of low-budget for education overarching subjective processes, inconsistencies between assessments of HEIs by different agencies, the government’s negligence towards the Institute of Excellence, etc.

Way Forward: 

To address the present issues involved in the assessment and accreditation processes, deliberations need to be held by the Government of India, and the following focus areas need to be considered:

• Closely engaging with Universities/HEIs to identify and understand their perspective.
• Examination of the existing documentation/verification processes and simplification/rationalisation.
• Adopting an incentive-based, facilitation-oriented approach to encourage HEIs to undertake accreditation.
• Studying the global best practices in accreditation and ranking of HEIs and their courses.
• Carrying out stakeholders’ consultation to further streamline the existing accreditation process of NAAC/NBA to enhance the credibility and value of accreditation and ranking.
• Rationalisation of the present system of recognition/accreditation and ranking by multiple agencies.
• The government must give due regard to the Institutes of Excellence to achieve global competitiveness in higher education.
• The government should adopt the best Global practices: For example, In the German higher education sector, various accreditations and quality characteristics ensure the quality of study programs and higher education institutions. They guarantee that graduates have the appropriate competencies.

Mains PYQ

Q. The quality of higher education in India requires major improvement to make it internationally competitive. Do you think that the entry of foreign educational institutions would help improve the quality of technical and higher education in the country. Discuss. (UPSC 2015)