Friends Pasting below a posting which did not get to the list. This also opens up door to make infra structure accessible under acredation framework. We need to work on it though. Harish Kotian Quoting:
The University Grants Commission recently made accreditation mandatory for all higher education institutions in India barring technical education institutions. It has come out with Mandatory Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Educational Institutions, Regulations, 2012.As per the UGC; it is being the done to accord recognition to the quality and excellence of education imparted by higher educational institutions and thereby to advance academic quality. The regulations have made it clear that Institutions failing to comply with the provisions will get derecognised under and will become ineligible for consideration for any assistance under any of the general or special assistance programmes of the Commission. At present, less than one-third of all universities and about one-fifth of the colleges are accredited in India excluding many of the famous and renowned universities and institutions which are not going for accreditation. India has two autonomous accreditation bodies namely National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and National Board of Accreditation (NBA) working under University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) respectively. India Education Review discussed the issue with the Vice Chancellors of some the universities to get their view on UGC making it mandatory and will this improve the quality of education provided by these institutions. Prof Dinesh Singh, Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi (DU) opined, "It is a very good move, as when it has been made mandatory. Talking about the Delhi University he said, we will have go for it. We will apply and follow all the rules and regulations." Prof A D N Vajpayee, Vice Chancellor, Himachal Pradesh University (HPU) said, "I think it is essential, the universities and colleges should themselves go for the accreditation. It is a very good move and we all must appreciate it." Prof Vajpayee further said that just assessing an institution in five years will not bring quality as there is need for continues evaluation. He said, "But after accreditation what is more important is that what steps the institutions take to further improve the quality of maintain the standard. Like if some institution gets C grade or B grade there is need to monitor what steps they take to improve the quality it needs continuous monitoring. The one time monitoring in five years is ok but there is need to help that institution to introspect, augment to know their strength and weakness at the same time." Prof C Raj Kumar, Vice Chancellor, OP Jindal Global University was of the view that as it has been made mandatory now universities will have go for it. He said, " It a very welcome thing, in past this was not the case there was limits of number of years that one has to go through and it was a kind of optional thing but that it has been made mandatory universities and institutions will certainly go for it and it would improve the quality of our institutions." "Universities should be encouraged to go through this process and I hope that the process is also transparent as any accreditation process should based upon transparent set of standards, the people should be transparent as many individuals might have interests in various institutions," added Prof Kumar. The VCs we spoke to have appreciated the move, but have asked for the process to be more elaborate. They also want the process to move beyond just monitoring. The number of colleges and universities in India is huge and it remains to be seen if the manpower the UGC and NAAC currently has would be enough to successfully assess and accredit the institutions across the country. Register at the dedicated AccessIndia list for discussing accessibility of mobile phones / Tabs on: http://mail.accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/mobile.accessindia_accessindia.org.in Search for old postings at: http://www.mail-archive.com/accessindia@accessindia.org.in/ To unsubscribe send a message to accessindia-requ...@accessindia.org.in with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
