Re-christening NAAC
Hema V. Raghavan
The latest World university
ranking has not added anyt hing
significant to Indian Universities. If there is anything that rivets our
attention, it is a noticeable decline of our premier universities like the IITs
and University of Delhi. All the remedial efforts of the UGC with guidance from
the Ministry of Human Resources Development seem to have failed to arrest this steady
deterioration in quality year after year.
One of the well thought out projects to remedy
the declining standards was the setting up of NAAC – National Accreditation and
Assessment Council. An elaborate process has been put in place to assess and
accredit colleges and universities on an eight Letter Grade based on seven
criteria. For Colleges it is as follows:
1. Curricular Aspects
2. Teaching-Learning and Evaluation
3. Research, Consultancy
and Extension
4. Infrastructure and
Learning Resources
5. Student Support and
Progression
6. Governance, Leadership
and Management.
7. Innovations and Best
Practices
For the universities,over
and above there is a greater emphasis on
Promotion of Research
Resource Mobilization for
Research
Research Facilities
Research Publications and
Awards
Consultancy
Extension Activities and
Institutional Social Responsibility and
Collaborations
As on November 2015, more than 3600 colleges and
around 200 universities have been assessed and given accreditation grades
between A++ and D. This is about 1/9th
of the 35,000colleges and 1/3rd or less of the 700 universities
established in the country. Hence it may
seem a tall proposition to expect a miraculous turnaround in the quality of
higher education. But the more relevant question is has there been any
momentous change in the standard of teaching-learning environment in the assessed
and accredited institutions? Though there is a five year interregnum before the
next assessment- cum- accreditation takes place, there is no sign of any
incremental quality in these institutions to talk about.
This takes us to the two
most relevant questions- what is accreditation and what is assessment? Accreditation,
simply defined, is the act of granting credit or recognition
especially with respect
to educational institutions that maintains suitable
standards. Assessment is evaluation or appraisal, the classification of something with respect to its
worth. What are the suitable standards on which institutions
have to be judged and who has set them? Research is often cited as the major
criterion to judge an institution’s excellence and there can be no gainsaying
this in respect of quality assessment. But research in colleges, unlike in
universities, is just a fraction of the work it sets out to do. Colleges are
the first rung of higher education where the students are exposed to new
concepts and ideas-in science, philosophy, humanities and commerce-and trained
to critically think and analyze them and integrate their learning with an
awareness of the society and the world around. Colleges serve as a platform for
dialogues and debates that are essential for mental training and
development. At school the students are taught
to gather facts and figures; colleges help to interpret them and universities
assist them to ideate, create and evaluate strategies around effective
implementation of new solutions for various challenges confronting society and
mankind. Universities build on education imparted in colleges and train
students in research that would help in taking ideas to the real world. University
research means discovering and making original contributions to knowledge. Thus assessment of a college is different
from assessment of a university.
Assessment and accreditation, as it is done
today is mainly in a monitoring mode. The colleges have to prepare a
comprehensive report known as SSR (Self Study Report) as per the Manual given
by NAAC. This report is so vast that it runs to at least 550 pages requiring
documentation of everything. The college is expected to submit three copies and
keep one to itself. This amounts to 4x550 i.e. 2200 pages on an average per
college. Besides this, the faculties have to prepare separate department files,
detailing meetings convened with documentary evidence, the CVs of the faculties
with proof of all the papers published, papers presented at seminars, workshops
and Conferences in addition to power point presentation of the activities of
the department that includes its past achievements, present work and future
plans. It is no exaggeration that the NAAC seeks at least 5000 pages of
documented reports. Considering the vision of paperless offices, one wonders if
NAAC is right in seeking such voluminous documentation for assessment. It begs
the question as to whether the starting premise of this investigation is one of
mistrust! The college faculty has to spend a minimum of 3-4 months –if not more
in preparing the reports – lest there should be any wrong data that would be
deemed as false exaggeration. This is not a criticism of NAAC but the word has
gone around that the investigating team will be looking for incorrectness-advertent
or inadvertent-to penalize the college and downgrade it. College after college
has been frantic to provide accurate details and wait with anxiety the actual
presence of the investigating team. It is a reality-though not necessarily and
always true- that the investigating team often takes on the role of an admonishing
monitor rather than that of an encouraging mentor. For fear of being
downgraded, the colleges try to silently accept all the harsh criticism and
ingratiate itself with the NAAC team, desperately pleading for a higher grade.
The primary objective of NAAC is to provide
suggestions for improvement-suggestions that are implementable, considering the
constraints under which colleges function. Colleges have to look for grants
from the UGC (in the case of Central Universities) and from the State administration
(in the case of State universities). Unless approved by the University Academic
Council and the Executive Council, no new degree course with an innovative
curriculum can be started by the colleges. At best they can introduce add-on
courses that are self funded. In most cases, for lack of sufficient funds, the
add-on courses are more to show on paper than they add to the competence and
learning of the students. Students do not like to pay and attend these courses
that at best may get them a certificate which does not have any market,
employable value. Similarly no college can initiate a curriculum change unless
the degree awarding university chooses to do so. New practices with the use of
educational technology are a far cry for lack of funds. Colleges with
undergraduate teaching cannot provide consultancy services. The lack of all
these criteria hampers recognition of the worth of the colleges unless they
have a good library, a functioning placement cell, excellent extra- curricular
activities including sports, music, dance, theatre etc, vibrant extension
programmes like Women’s cell, Gender studies, Environment programmes and other
outreach programmes such as community service and designing meaningful social activities.
Overarching all these would be reasonably good academic results. Getting grade
A is a possible reality, though not a certainty.
One of the problems of
higher education in our country is the enormous stress on uniformity and a
strong disapproval of diversity which permits institutions to pursue their
respective vision and mission, consistent
with the university’s specified educational objectives. It is this that denies colleges to draw up
their own pedagogical strategies but insists
on straight-jacketing them within a system drawn by NAAC. It ignores the main
thrust of college education-to give the students the freedom and right to
access opportunities for learning and for the open exchange of ideas. Teaching can
be done in many ways just as the top of a mountain can be reached from
different directions. There are teachers who may need a whole semester to cover
the given syllabus while some others may prefer to give a few comprehensive
lectures and let the students supplement
them with self study. They do not need more than two or three lectures to
complete a topic, but they are outstanding lectures and they promote the
curiosity and interest of the students to go the library to find books to substantiate
what they had learnt in the classroom. There is no need to prvilege one form of
teaching over another. Suffice it to say, colleges and academic institutions
have to devise their own methods of giving instruction taking into account the standard
and quality of students enrolled and in
that plurality lies the process to attain the singularity or uniqueness of fulfilling
higher educational goals. NAAC should not expect a set pattern of teaching but
should give credit to all pioneering strategies that may not be in sync with
the norms set by the UGC. I recall Coleridge comparing Shakespeare and Schiller’s
tragedies: “Schiller burns a whole city to produce an effect of terror and
Shakespeare drops a handkerchief and freezes our blood.” The goal is the same-to make students learn to
think, analyze, critique, and generate ideas and solutions to meet the present needs
of the State and society. Truth is one; paths are many. NAAC should refrain
from looking into the time tables, the number of classes taken by the teacher,
the number of hours a teacher is made to stay in college etc. What NAAC should
look at is the students’ learning quotient, student graduation rate, and most importantly
student success, which means their meaningful
and gainful employment after graduation.
Accreditation is to be voluntary which inter
alia necessitates colleges to draw up high standards and rigorous application
of requirement to meet them. “The process provides an assessment of an institution’s
effectiveness in the fulfillment of its mission, its compliance with the
requirements of its accrediting association, and its continuing efforts to
enhance the quality ofstudent learning and its programs and services. Based
upon reasoned judgment,
the process stimulates evaluation and improvement, while
providing a means of continuing accountability to constituents and the public(society)”(The
Accreditation Principles : Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on
Colleges, Georgia ). Colleges who get
accreditation will thus have a quality far superior to those who have not
volunteered for the accreditation process.
The
NAAC team should be familiar with the way different universities function.
Colleges which are constituent colleges or affiliated colleges to a Central
university function differently from colleges affiliated to State universities.
NAAC team for Central University colleges should be drawn from Central
Universities and similarly State universities should have a NAAC team drawn
from State universities. It is also important that the NAAC team should have an
open mind to appreciate whatever positive steps colleges are following and not
fault them if these steps are different from what it considers as the best
practices to be followed. Higher education in the last decade has moved its
focus from the previous years towards inter-disciplinary studies , distinct
from stand-alone discipline studies. It will be a short sighted approach if the
NAAC negatively apprises faculty’s personal achievements in disciplines other
than the one s/he had done at the Masters and Doctoral levels . These are the days
when in the words of C.P.Snow, a person is to be regarded as illiterate if s/he knows the second Law of Thermodynamics ,
but is ignorant of Shakespeare and vice
versa. NAAC should have a broad based catholic approach to appreciate the
achievements of faculty in different academic spheres that would enrich
students’ holistic learning. NAAC members should not straightjacket faculties
into stand- alone disciplines but give credit to those whose work and
achievement go beyond their specialized disciplines.
Today the NAAC assessment goes beyond the
academic criteria to include administrative and accounts departments. But this
should not be included as they are yearly audited and the audit report is given
to the UGC or the state authority in charge of funding. The quality of
education can be enhanced if the college is instructed to improve these two
departments, but NAAC as a quality control council need not be burdened with
them.
NAAC
is a good step towards rectifying the problems that ail higher education.
Instead of assessment and accreditation that sound draconian in intention, can
NAAC be re-christened as UCIC –Universities and Colleges Improvement Council
where the true intention matches the vision that the name embodies? The quality
of education should never be strained. It should encourage the teacher and the
learner to meet the single objective of sustaining, supporting and maintaining
high standards in higher education. True quality emerges not through paternalistic
control and admonition, but through appreciation and acknowledgement of what
has been achieved and with good guidance towards what can be still more
achieved.
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