‘Need to review NAAC current rating system and improve it’

Mumbai: A deemed university in Coimbatore recently jumped five grades in five years; between two NAAC cycles, the college, earlier awarded grade B, saw its rating touch the highest level of A++. The country has never had as many institutes being awarded the top grade, shows data from the accrediting agency.
Bhushan Patwardhan, chairman of the NAAC’s executive committee, said an audit to understand the sudden surge in ratings is underway.“We understand there are some discrepancies and the current system needs to be reviewed and improved upon,” said Patwardhan.
UGC chairman Jagdeesh Kumar concurred. “As part of the National Education Policy, under one of the verticals, we are looking at how we can bring about synergy among the NAAC, NIRF and the NBA (National Board of Accreditation). Under that, we will look at all kinds of complaints and anomalies too,” he told TOI.
About a month ago, the NAAC had withheld the grading of M S University, Vadodara, after receiving an anonymous tip-off alleging that the university authorities had tried to influence the peer review team with gold, cash and other favours.
However, the NAAC subsequently released the improved grading, terming the allegations “false”, as per its findings.
According to the NEP, the National Accreditation Council will bring about overall unity among the accreditation and ranking agencies.
A white paper authored by Patwardhan said instead of graded accreditation of higher education institutes, their binary accreditation and graded accreditation of academic programmes/constituent units will be the replacement. The focus of assessment and accreditation will be based on the learning outcomes and not on the inputs provided by colleges or universities.