Govt colleges at sea over NAAC’s revamped accreditation process

BENGALURU: The revamped accreditation process of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has left government educational institutions across the state in a quandary. Applications from 13 of the 23 government institutions seeking accreditation are hanging fire, the state quality assurance cell (SQAC) has reported.
NAAC accreditation is crucial for government institutions in availing of grants.But the new accreditation system which was put in place in July 2017 and shifted the process online, has thrown up many imponderables, leaving colleges, especially those in the hinterland, flummoxed.
Several government institutions that have applied for renewal of accreditation told TOI they have been waiting for two months to hear from the council on the application status. “Earlier, the council had a system of responding to the institution within 10 days of submitting the Self-Study Report (SSR), a crucial step in the process of gaining accreditation, by post. But now even though we upload the SSR online, it’s taking time,” said an official from Government First Grade College, Chitradurga.
The college had applied for the third cycle of accreditation on November 23. “We later received two clarification mails from NAAC to which we replied the same day. But we haven’t heard from the council since,” the official added.
Another government institution from Kushalnagar, Kodagu, also confirmed that it is facing similar problems after having applied for the third cycle of accreditation last November.
The SQAC, a wing of the department of collegiate education which co-ordinates with government institutions on accreditation, has raised a string of issues dogging the revamped process in three letters to NAAC. Copies of the letters are with TOI.
Institutions in Karnataka are also upset over the new norms governing peer team evaluation visits, another vital stage in the accreditation process. While details of the peer team members are not shared with them, institutions are expected to not only pay for the visit but also make travel, food and lodging arrangements. In many instances, last-minute calls made to institutions to pick up peer team members from railway stations, airports and bus stands without knowing their details have caught the colleges off-guard.
“The institutions are left in utter panic as everything is shrouded in deep mystery...The framers don’t seem to have anticipated these practical hurdles in their mission to make the process theoretically simple but practically complicated,” Siddalinga Swamy, coordinator, SQAC, who’s also a peer team member, wrote in one of his letters to the NAAC.
Only 2 windows to apply
The revamped NAAC accreditation process gives only two windows for application — May-June and November-December. Under the earlier process, colleges whose applications were rejected could re-apply repeatedly through the year. Siddalinga Swamy, coordinator, SQAC, said May-June and November-December are periods when exams or vacations are under way in most institutions, and finding faculty members to conform to various processes is very difficult.
Karnataka boasts of one the highest number of government institutions seeking NAAC accreditation. The state has seen 184 government institutions getting NAAC accreditation over the past three years; the number was 86 last year.
Unrealistic conditions
Government institutions are finding requisites of the revamped accreditation process like student diversity, choice-based credit system programmes and presence of differently abled students unrealistic. “In rural areas, one cannot expect a government college to have national diversity, let alone international,” said Swamy. “Some questions have high weightage of 10 points but don’t apply to the institution. This ambiguity in the framework has not yet been addressed by the council.”
What NAAC says
“The new processes employed in the methodology facilitate transparency and better coordination in the assessment and accreditation process as a whole. It may also be noted that the applications for the second window are under acceptance and the last date is January 12, 2018. All higher education institutions which had applied in the first window (May-June 2017) are expected to undergo peer review in February/March 2018,” says NAAC.