October 03, 2023

The Rot In NAAC Needs To Be Addressed Fast

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

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

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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.