ALL SARKARI EXAM: What is accreditation, and how does it help an educational institution?

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has relaxed the eligibility criteria for accreditation of higher educational institutions.

Need for:

The purpose of the change, according to the guidelines, is to “widen the horizon of accreditation”.

What are the current rules for accreditation?

Under the rules before the new guidelines were issued, only higher education institutions that are at least six years old, or from where at least two batches of students have graduated, could apply for accreditation with NAAC.
The accreditation is valid for five years. Aspiring institutes need to be recognised by the UGC and have regular students enrolled into their full-time teaching and research programmes.
Distance education units and offshore campuses are not covered under the accreditation process.

What is accreditation?

Accreditation is a quality check exercise.

It checks whether an institution meets certain standards of quality set by the evaluator in terms of curriculum, faculty, infrastructure, research and financial well-being among others.
Based on these parameters, the NAAC gives institutions grades ranging from A++ to C. If an institution is graded D, it means it is not accredited.

Benefits of accreditation:

Apart from recognition, being accredited also helps institutions attract capital as funding agencies look for objective data for performance funding.
It helps an institution know its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities through an informed review process.
Accreditation helps students going for higher education abroad as many global higher education authorities insist on recognition and accreditation of the institution where the student has studied.

How many institutions in India are accredited?

As of February 8, there were 392 universities and 8,483 colleges that were NAAC-accredited.
Region-wise, the northern states have the highest number of accredited universities at 136, followed by the south with 113, the west with 72.
Among the states, Maharashtra accounts for the highest number of accredited colleges at 1,796, which is more than twice as many as the Karnataka’s 864, the next highest. Tamil Nadu has the most accredited universities at 43.

Efforts by Government in this regard:

In 2019, the UGC launched a scheme, Paramarsh, to address the issue.

Under the scheme, some of the best performing institutes were identified to serve as mentors to at least five institutes aspiring to get accredited.

What will the new guidelines change?

Under the new manual, colleges and universities that have completed even one academic year will be eligible to apply for a newly created category of ‘Provisional Accreditation for Colleges’ or PAC.
The PAC, which will not offer any grading, will be valid for two years, and institutions cannot get it more than two times.

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