Indian degrees are now being recognised globally based on NAAC grades assigned to institutions, which has become possible only after the revised assessment framework released by the National Assessment Accreditation Council (NAAC) came into effect, said NAAC advisor Jagannath Patil on Monday.
“Unlike in the past when three-year degrees were not considered equivalent to four-year degrees in many of the universities in USA for admissions to post graduation courses, such degrees are now being considered from the institutions that have A-grade from NAAC,” he said.
“This was possible only because of the robust system being adopted in the form of the revised assessment framework introduced in July 2017,” he said while addressing senior academicians from institutions across the country, who are prospective NAAC assessors attending assessors’ orientation programme at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Trichy on Monday.
Speaking on the growing importance of accreditation, he said, “Everything in higher educational institutions, be it policy on funding related matters that deal with awarding of graded autonomy status, university status or RUSA funding, all are linked to accreditation outcomes.”
“The government wanted to link everything with accreditation mechanism rather than the regulatory mechanism. Therefore, a robust and reliable accreditation framework had to be developed,” he said.
Saying that NAAC is not merely an assessment agency, but with a mandate to improve the higher education system, he said, “No country in the world uses such complex process to assess institutions which is essential.”
“For over three decades, assessment outcome of an institution was entirely depended on the sole wisdom of peer members. Now peer judgement – comprising three members peer team which visit the institution – has only 30% say. The rest depend on the quantitative data submitted by the institution,” he added.
“It is only because of NAAC that a large number of alumni associations were formed across various institutions. Alumni interaction is an important aspect in the assessment process now. Institutions realised that alumni are a potential source that they can tap in for the growth of the institutions,” said Patil.
Courtesy : TOI
