20 pc rise in NAAC accredited colleges in 1-yr

By Mehboob Inamdar'

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar: There has been a 20 per cent rise in National Assessment and Accredited Council (NAAC) accredited colleges within the jurisdiction of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) during the last one year.

It may be not that the Univeristy Grants Commission insisted that education institutes undergo NAAC accreditation. The State Government also made the NAAC grade mandatory for colleges and universities, otherwise, their salary will not be disbursed.

There are 476 affiliated undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) colleges in Bamu for the current academic year. Around 100 colleges obtained grades from the Council until 2023. The number of accredited colleges rose to 120 this year and also, and 20 are in the process of seeking grades.

Talking to this newspaper, Pro-vice chancellor Dr Walmik Sarwade said that the Univeristy Grants Commission mandated colleges to seek NAAC grades as per the revised norms.

“The State Government asked colleges to seek from the national level council compulsorily within the given deadline. Those colleges which will fail to do so will be deprived of Government aid. NAAC grade is also one of the parameters for seeking funds for the research and development projects,” he said.

Dr Sarwade said that the objective is to enhance the quality and accountability of educational institutions in the State. “In the era of competition, ranks and grades for educational institutions have attached great importance. There is also stress on the grades in National Education Policy (NEP)-2020. The government also implemented a scheme to encourage colleges to grade. Our university carried out awareness among colleges and helped them in getting grades,” he added.

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Criterion-wise weightage

The NAAC has identified a set of seven criteria to serve as the basis of its assessment procedures. The criterion-wise differential weightage for affiliated colleges is as follows;

--Curricular Aspects----------------------------100

--Teaching-learning and Evaluation----------350

--Research, Innovations and Extension------120

--InfrastructureandLearning Resources----100

--Student Support and Progression-----------130

--Governance, Leadership and Management-100

--Institutional Values and Best Practices-----100

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New accreditation system

The NAAC adopted a new criteria of two stages. It is a simple, technology-driven system for awarding accreditations being implemented from September 2024. The two stages are Binary Accreditation and Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation.

Binary Accreditation:

-- Under this framework, the institutions will be awarded either “Accredited” or “Not Accredited” eliminating the grading system.

--If the college gets 2 Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) then the outcome will be “Accredited” (for a period of two years).

--If the college gets 1.50 and less than 2 CGPA then the outcome be “Provisionally Accredited” (for a period of one year).

--If the college gets less than a 1.50 CGPA then the outcome will be “Not Accredited.”.

--If a college is not accredited, they can again apply to NAAC after six months.

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Maturity-Based Graded Accreditation

The Maturity-Based Graded accreditation implementation is slated for December 2024.

--Under this framework, the institutions will be graded between the range of Level 1 to 5.

--Institutes with Levels 1 to 4 – will be called ‘Institutions of National Excellence’

--Institutes with Level 5 will be called ‘Institutions of Global Excellence for Multi-Disciplinary Research and Education.’