New Delhi: Medical colleges don’t really have placements the way an IIT or IIM does, putting them at a “disadvantage” when it comes to assessment for accreditation and institutional rankings. And staff at public education institutions find themselves working beyond their hours — “with no incentive” — to collect data for assessment exercises of the government.
These are among the concerns raised by Indian higher education institutions with the Ministry of Education, which had sought their suggestions on improving the government’s accreditation and ranking frameworks under the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) and the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
The suggestions were sought after a government-formed committee — tasked with strengthening the accreditation system, and bringing it in line with the vision of the National Education Policy 2020 — submitted its report.
Headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K. Radhakrishnan, the committee recommended several changes in its report, made public on 12 May. These included a shift to a binary accreditation system from the eight-point grading system, mentoring systems for institutes that fall behind in accreditation grading, and encouraging institutes to become multi-disciplinary.
Since the report was released, the NAAC — which assesses higher education institutions every five years for their quality standards in terms of educational processes and outcomes, curriculum coverage, teaching-learning processes, faculty, research, infrastructure etc — has held three rounds of meetings with over 80 institutes.
The higher education institutions were asked to submit their responses by 22 June.
Speaking to ThePrint, institutes from different parts of India said their concerns ranged from a human resources crunch for data collection to different types of institutes being ranked by a similar set of parameters.
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Demand for separate data collection teams
Public colleges and institutes ThePrint spoke to said they did not have the required human resources to collect data for the accreditation and ranking process. The task is often assigned to professors, which adds to their working hours, without any recognition or compensation, they added.
Higher education institutions have pointed out to the ministry that private colleges hire special staff to work on data collection for NAAC and NIRF.
“The task of collating data for the NAAC and NIRF, given its importance, is assigned to some of our best professors,” said Professor Simrit Kaur, principal of Delhi University’s Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC).
Given how voluminous and time-consuming the process of data collection is, it “shall be appreciated if a data management officer position is sanctioned to institutions”, she said.
The other point of concern was about retaining the weightage given to site visits by NAAC officials.
In its report, the Radhakrishnan committee has suggested “replacing the current manual verifications and minimising dependence on visit of personal teams”.
Kaur said the site visits are important, but added it must be ensured that the officials are “unbiased”.
Professor Bijayalaxmi Nanda, principal of DU’s Miranda House, said “peer review or visit of personal teams” is an important step in the accreditation process.
“When one visits an institution, only then they will see physical evidence and be able to give NAAC grades,” she added. “There are some institutions that can do great documentation, but it’s only when the campus is visited, that a better perspective can be gained. Giving greater marking or equal marking to peer review builds greater accountability.”
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‘Need for increased categories’
In their communication to the ministry, it is learnt, many colleges have asked for additional parameters in the accreditation system, which take into account factors like placements, location, specialisation and funding.
Kaur said ranking frameworks assess institutions “homogeneously irrespective of their discipline”. “The framework must account for different disciplines,” she added. “There must be separate frameworks for specialised and multi-disciplinary institutions, given the differences in their composition, research and expenditure.”
A representative of Panjab University, a state university, added, “Most of our students pursue social science subjects and they either continue education or foray into research. This means technical or management institutions will do better than us on placement grades, but our research is strong.”
According to the representative, who requested anonymity, “several other categories like performance in sports and other extracurriculars need to be added to the assessment”.
Another state university official, who did not wish to be named, pointed out that the funding received by state universities is lower in comparison to central institutions, and the assessment process needs to account for this.
“If our equity is smaller, then it is obvious that the ambit of our activities will be small. Our infrastructure will be developed in accordance with it and our student outcomes will also depend on the expenditure we will be able to make off those limited funds,” the official added. “If that puts us in a low ranking in the NAAC grade, then even being mentored by another institution will not help us.”
The official was referring to a suggestion of the Radhakrishnan committee that high-performing institutes mentor low performers to improve their quality.
Meanwhile, for many state universities set in remote locations, a major concern is lack of access to the kind of resources that urban private and public institutions have.
This directly impacts student outcomes, teacher availability, placements and exposure of students, the official quoted above said. “There needs to be some equalising mechanism to consider these factors in the accreditation process,” the official added.
Making the same argument, the representative of a Maharashtra-based medical college pointed out that such institutes can’t be compared to those that have a robust placement scene.
“In medical colleges, placements don’t take place the way they do in technical institutions. Our MBBS graduates either start a practice, take a drop year to prepare for specialisation or continue their education,” the representative added. “None of these count as placements, how are we to be assessed in comparison with other conventional institutions?”
(Edited by Richa Mishra)
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