As the Ministry of Education has now linked academic funding and recognition of colleges to their National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) grades, Odisha's Department of Higher Education has started hand-holding colleges — autonomous and teacher training colleges, in particular — to help them file their applications for the accreditation process, as stated in a report by The New Indian Express.
There are 1,047 degree colleges in the state and just about 48 have a valid NAAC grade now. Grades of the rest have expired and they have not applied for re-accreditation with the process being made exhaustive by the University Grants Commission (UGC). As per the new rules, a college applying or reapplying for accreditation has to digitally upload certificates and reports that act as evidence of its claims of achievements apart from its internal quality assessment report and self-study report (SSR) to the NAAC website.
In this regard, officials from the department said that a majority of the institutes are shying away from getting accredited or re-accredited because they are unable to produce and upload the certificates or write their SSRs and quality assessment reports. To help them do so, the State Higher Education Council of the department has roped in five expert academicians who are helping the colleges write their SSRs and internal quality assessment reports besides the online documentation process, they added.
Phases of assessment
In the first phase, 52 such colleges have been helped by the council and 28 of them have been successful in getting their internal quality assessment reports and SSRs accepted by NAAC recently. For accreditation, a college has to first submit its quality assessment report to the NAAC and after its approval, it submits the SSR. Only after the SSR is approved by NAAC, the college can request a NAAC peer team to visit its campus for assessment.
In the second phase in February, council Vice-Chairperson Ashok Das said 100 to 150 colleges will be provided the hand-holding support to appear for the NAAC accreditation process. Further, Das said, "Since many of the institutions are unaware of the process or are finding it taxing, we are ensuring that they do it correctly to secure their NAAC grades at the earliest, given the changes being brought in the higher education scenario under the National Education Policy (NEP)." The process would help the colleges become NAAC compliant in a time-bound manner, Das added.
