NEW DELHI: To upgrade the quality of higher education in the country, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous body under the University Grants Commission (UGC), has revamped the accreditation process and taken it online. Colleges and Universities will only receive intimation on whether they have been given accreditation or not with the seven-scale rating system that had existed the last three decades to be done away with. An official announcement is likely to be made on July 29 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a grand event to be organised by the Ministry of Education to mark the fifth anniversary of the launch of the National Education Policy 2020, said sources.Chairman of the Executive Council of NAAC, Anil Sahasrabudhe, told this newspaper, “As on date, roughly 40% of the 1,170 universities in the country have obtained accreditation. When it comes to colleges, not even 20% of the 50,000-odd colleges have managed to get it. Our objective is to ensure that between 90%-95% of these higher educational institutions obtain the accreditation.”Accreditation is a stamp of guarantee of the quality of education offered in the institution. “It will help the students enormously as they will gain knowledge of a good standard. Parents too will be relieved as they are assured of the quality provided in the institution after paying a hefty sum as fee,” he explained.A senior education official said that the fear of not getting a good grade in the existing system had actually put off hundreds of institutions from applying for the accreditation in the past. Higher educational institutions are presently offered the NAAC accreditation for a five-year period. The revamped process will bring it down to just three years. “The basic process of obtaining the accreditation will be done fully online with no field visits required by the Committee. This is a major step in simplifying the process and encouraging higher educational institutions to come forward to apply to NAAC,” he said.A new system of gradation will be introduced. “Those who get the accreditation can next opt for Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation with five levels set to be introduced, ranging between Level 1 and Level 5. Colleges and universities can keep upgrading themselves with one level after another. Level-1 and Level-2 are relatively easy to get and can be obtained online. Level-3 will be a hybrid one with online and field visits to the institute by the NAAC team,” he said. Institutions which already offer a high standard can directly apply to a higher level rather than approach the process step by step, he added.Level-4 and Level-5 will be extremely difficult to obtain and have stringent qualifying criteria. The latter will only be awarded to institutions offering education on par with international standards, Sahasrabudhe added.
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