The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)’s efforts to stop institutions from submitting incorrect self-study reports through a new methodology appears to be working: A good number of institutions failed to meet the NAAC parameters and were not recommended for assessment.

Under the methodology, Institutional Eligibility and Quality Assessment (IEQA), assessment was not recommended for 119 of the 434 institutions that applied.

Screening test

“IEQA acts like a screening test for the institutions to be recommended for the assessment. Here, the institutions, which wants to be assessed by NAAC should fill up the proforma. It contains around 25 questions on various parameters such as infrastructure, faculty among other things. The filled in forms are submitted online and sent to IEQA, which  check the details and forward it to NAAC only if found suitable,” explained Dr M S Shyama Sundar, Deputy Advisor, NAAC.

According to the official, this method was introduced after some institutions were found submitting incorrect self-study report.

‘Copied’ reports

In a few cases, the institutions would simply ‘copy’ the report of the other institution to get assessed by NAAC. Only during the institutional visit will the NAAC team discover that the report was an exaggerated version of the ground reality. This often increased the burden of the NAAC team.

Between June and December 2007, as many as 434 institutions from North, South, East and West zones had applied for NAAC assessment. The data showed that of the 162 institutions from Western region that applied for IEQA, 102 were recommended for assessment. Similarly, 115 institutions from South had applied, of which only 18 were not recommended.

Karnataka had 24 institutions, of which more than 50 per cent had satisfied the criteria for assessment. From North and East, the number of institutions applied was 63 and 94, of which 45 and 71 were recommended respectively.

As on December 2007, 19 institutions were accredited by NAAC under the new methodology. Of these, seven of them were from Karnataka.

Surprisingly, none of these institutions were awarded ‘A’ grades. Four institutions were re-accredited, including a university.

The institutions not recommended by IEQA would be given six months time to rectify their deficiencies. Once the defects are corrected, the institutes could apply for the assessment again, said the official.