Panel asks Centre to increase number of accredited colleges

With barely 20 per cent of Indian colleges accredited by the government, a Parliamentary panel has asked the government to work out a mechanism to increase the number. The panel, headed by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, further suggested that the frequency and periodicity of accreditations should be defined.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Education, Women, Children, Youth, and Sports observed that among the 50,000 colleges in India, only 9,000 were accredited. In addition to that only 30 per cent of the over 1000 universities in India are accredited.

“Considering the importance of accreditation as it underscores standardization and a guarantee towards minimum benchmark, more efforts to offer incentives to bring institutions under accreditation system is the need of the hour,” the panel noted.

The secretary of the union ministry of education said that the government has constituted a Committee under Prof MK Sridhar who is a member of the National Education Policy Draft Committee and former dean at Bangalore University’s Department of Management Studies to study the binary system of accreditation.

The binary system, part of the proposed norms of the National Education Policy 2020, is one where an institute is either accredited or not, as opposed to the current grading system. The two bodies that conduct accreditations currently are the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the National Board of Accreditation (NBA). NAAC accredits general colleges and universities while NBA looks at technical courses such as engineering and management. While NBA does course-wise accreditation, NAAC does it institution-wise.

As per the report, the secretary also said that in the Higher Education Regulatory Commission Bill, one of the verticals will be the accreditation body.

The Committee also recommended that the institute’s exam management competency should also be considered as a mandatory parameter for accreditation, and that universities and institutes who conduct examinations smoothly should be given better grading. “Besides, experiments like the Question Bank system and adoption of complete digitization of the examination process by institutes/universities to ensure fair and timely conduct of examination and declaration of results, amongst others may be incentivised,” the report suggested.