New Delhi: Medical colleges don’t really have placements like IITs or IIMs, which puts them at a “disadvantage” when it comes to evaluation of accreditation and institutional rankings. And employees of public education institutions find themselves working beyond their hours – “without any incentive” – to collect data for the government’s evaluation exercise.
These are among the concerns raised by Indian higher education institutions with the Ministry of Education seeking their suggestions to improve the government’s accreditation and ranking framework under the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) Were.
The suggestions were sought after a government-constituted committee – tasked with strengthening the accreditation system and bringing it in line with the vision of the National Education Policy 2020 – submitted its report.
Former chief of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) K. The committee, headed by Radhakrishnan, recommended several changes in its report made public on 12 May. These include a change from an eight-point grading system to a binary accreditation system, a mentoring system for institutions lagging behind in accreditation grading, and encouraging institutions to become multidisciplinary.
Since the release of the report, NAAC – which assesses higher education institutions every five years for their quality standards in terms of educational processes and outcomes, curriculum coverage, teaching-learning processes, faculty, research, infrastructure etc. – Has held three rounds of meetings. With more than 80 institutions.
Higher education institutions were asked to submit their responses by June 22.
Speaking to ThePrint, institutes from different parts of India said their concerns range from lack of human resources for data collection to different types of institutes being ranked on the same parameters.
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Demand for separate data collection teams
Public colleges and institutions ThePrint spoke to said they do not have the necessary human resources to collect data for the accreditation and ranking process. They said this task is often assigned to professors, which leads to longer working hours without any recognition or compensation.
Higher education institutions have told the ministry that private colleges employ specialized staff to work on data collection for NAAC and NIRF.
Professor Simreet Kaur, Principal, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), University of Delhi, said, “The task of collecting data for NAAC and NIRF, given its importance, has been entrusted to some of our best professors.”
Given how cumbersome and time consuming the process of data collection is, “it would be appreciated if the institutions are sanctioned the post of Data Management Officer”.
Another issue of concern was the retention of the importance given by the NAAC officials to the site visits.
In its report, the Radhakrishnan Committee has suggested “to replace the present manual verification and reduce dependence on travel of individual teams”.
Kaur said the site visit is important, but it must also be ensured that the officials are “impartial”.
Professor Bijayalakshmi Nanda, principal of DU’s Miranda House, said the “peer review or visit of individual teams” is an important step in the accreditation process.
“When one visits an institute, only then will they see the physical evidence and be able to give the NAAC grade,” he added. “There are some institutions that can do excellent documentation, but a better perspective can be gained only when the campus is visited. Giving more marks or equal marks to peer review creates more accountability.
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‘Need for increased ranges’
It is learned that in their letter to the ministry, several colleges have sought additional parameters in the accreditation system, which take into account factors such as placement, location, specialization and funding.
Kaur said that ranking frameworks evaluate institutions “homogenously, regardless of their discipline”. “The framework should take care of a variety of subjects,” he said. “Given the difference in their structure, research and expenditure, there should be separate frameworks for specialized and multidisciplinary institutions.”
A representative from the state university, Panjab University, said, “Most of our students study social science subjects and they either continue their education or move into research. This means technical or management institutes will do better than us in terms of placement grade, but our research is strong.
According to the representative, who requested anonymity, “many other categories like performance in sports and other extra-curricular activities need to be added to the assessment”.
Another state university official, who did not wish to be named, pointed out that the funding received by state universities is less than that of central institutions, and this has to be taken into account in the evaluation process.
“If our equity is small, then obviously the scope of our activities will also be small. Our infrastructure will be developed accordingly and the outcome of our students will also depend on the expenditure that we will be able to extract from those limited funds,” the official said. “If it keeps us on a low ranking in NAAC grade, then even being guided by some other institute will not help us.”
The official was referring to a suggestion of the Radhakrishnan Committee that high-performing institutions mentor the low-performing ones to improve their quality.
Meanwhile, for many state universities established in remote locations, a major concern is the lack of access to resources that urban private and public institutions have.
This has a direct bearing on student results, availability of teachers, placements and performance of students, said the official cited above. “There is a need for some uniform mechanism to consider these factors in the accreditation process,” the official said.
Making the same argument, a representative from a Maharashtra-based medical college pointed out that such institutes cannot be compared with those that have a strong placement scenario.
“Placements in medical colleges are not the same as in technical institutes. Our MBBS graduates either start practice, take a year off to prepare for specialization or continue their education,” said the representative. “None of this counts as placement, how will we be assessed in comparison to other traditional institutes?”
(Editing by Richa Mishra)