oppn parties The Rot In NAAC Needs To Be Addressed Fast

News Snippets

  • The Indian envoy in Bangladesh was summoned by the country's government over the breach in the Bangladesh mission in Agartala
  • Bank account to soon have 4 nominees each
  • TMC and SP stayed away from the INDIA bloc protest over the Adani issue in the Lok Sabha
  • Delhi HC stops the police from arresting Nadeem Khan over a viral video which the police claimed promoted 'enmity'. Court says 'India's harmony not so fragile'
  • Trafiksol asked to refund IPO money by Sebi on account of alleged fraud
  • Re goes down to 84.76 against the USD but ends flat after RBI intervenes
  • Sin goods like tobacco, cigarettes and soft drinks likely to face 35% GST in the post-compensation cess era
  • Bank credit growth slows to 11% (20.6% last year) with retail oans also showing a slowdown
  • Stock markets continue their winning streak on Tuesday: Sensex jumps 597 points to 80845 and Nifty gains 181 points to 24457
  • Asian junior hockey: Defending champions India enter the finals by beating Malaysia 3-1, to play Pakistan for the title
  • Chess World title match: Ding Liren salvages a sraw in the 7th game which he almost lost
  • Experts speculate whether Ding Liren wants the world title match against D Gukesh to go into tie-break after he let off Gukesh easily in the 5th game
  • Tata Memorial Hospital and AIIMS have severely criticized former cricketer and Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu for claiming that his wife fought back cancer with home remedies like haldi, garlic and neem. The hospitals warned the public for not going for such unproven remedies and not delaying treatment as it could prove fatal
  • 3 persons died and scores of policemen wer injured when a survey of a mosque in Sambhal near Bareilly in UP turned violent
  • Bangladesh to review power pacts with Indian companies, including those of the Adani group
D Gukesh is the new chess world champion at 18, the first teen to wear the crown. Capitalizes on an error by Ding Liren to snatch the crown by winning the final game g
oppn parties
The Rot In NAAC Needs To Be Addressed Fast

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-03-10 07:45:15

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is an independent body under the University Grants Commission (UGC). It is tasked with assessing institutions of higher education on various parameters for the quality of education they impart and accredit them by awarding grades. Students go by the NAAC accreditation to judge a college or university before taking admission as it is meant to assure them about the quality of education imparted in that college or university. But the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) has now pulled up NAAC for having 'discrepancies' in the processes it uses to assess the institutions and has charged the body with awarding points 'arbitrarily'. NAAC, on its part, has not agreed to the CAG assessment and has issued a note which says that its processes were "robust, transparent, ICT-driven and automated" and its assessments were "done transparently and professionally". But CAG has cited several instances where the grades awarded by peer team members were not in line with the submission made by the colleges and this happened in 29% cases or in 41 out of 133 cases checked by CAG. It has also found that points were awarded for facilities that did not exist in some institutions.

The adverse remarks by CAG come close on heels of the resignation of Bhushan Patwardhan, the executive committee chairperson of NAAC. Patwardhan resigned to "safeguard the sanctity" of the post. He was appointed just a year earlier and had since then flagged many irregularities in the functioning of the body. He had also written to the UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar in February pointing out that some institutions were getting "questionable grades" due to "vested interests and malpractices". Reports had earlier suggested that some peer teams had been bribed by some institutions to get better grades. Since the matter is about the quality of education, the UGC must act and set the house in order otherwise there will be nothing left of the NAAC motto of excellence, credibility and relevance.