Bringing the premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) under the ambit of the unified accreditation process, moving towards a binary accreditation system, making the exercise “outcome-centric”, setting up a new body for data verification and validation, using crowdsourcing of data verification, single-point data entry through use of APIs, penalties for mis-submissions and mentoring of institutes falling below standards, some of the work done by the overarching committee set up by the Center to suggest reforms in the assessment and accreditation system The main recommendations are of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the country.
News18 on 9th May first to report Some of the possible recommendations of the committee, including software changes, data integration through APIs, use of crowdsourcing and penalties for institutions submitting false data.
In its report released late on Friday, the committee said that only 30 per cent HEIs in the country, including affiliated colleges, are recognised. Noting that there is a long way to go, it stressed the need to streamline the process and align National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF).
The report comes after NAAC, an autonomous body that grades colleges and universities on prescribed parameters, courted controversy over alleged “irregularities” in its functioning, prompting its executive committee chief Bhushan Patwardhan, who had initially flagged issues with the accreditation process, his post on March 5 this year to resign.
The committee, constituted last November, is headed by former Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K Radhakrishnan, who is currently the chairman of the Board of Governors (BoG) at IIT-Kanpur, and has officials and experts from various agencies and institutions , University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), representatives of state governments and universities, teachers and computer science engineers, among others.
The reforms are in line with the establishment of a single body for accreditation – the National Accreditation Council (NAC) – which has been outlined in the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 and will replace the NAAC and the NBA.
“These reforms have been proposed with the strategic intent of creating a credible, objective and rational system for approval, recognition and ranking of HEIs with a verifiable and secure centralized database; technology-driven modern systems that can replace/reduce human involvement and; Providing mentoring and encouragement to raise the level of recognition as well as their participation for global acclaim, the report said.
In a major change, for the first time, IITs – which currently follow their own internal system for periodic peer assessment and evaluation of programs – have been recommended to be brought under a unified accreditation system for all HEIs Is.
“To bring all IITs under the purview of the Unified Accreditation Process and adopt the National Credit Framework (NCRF) in principle, a presentation of the proposed reforms was made at the 55th meeting of the Council of IITs held at IIT-Bhubaneswar. April 18 this year His approval was given in principle.
The report also recommended a change from the present eight-point grading system of the NAAC to an adapted binary accreditation system – a) ‘Accredited, (b) ‘Accredited Accreditation’ (for those who are close to the threshold level); (c) ‘Not Accredited’ (for those who are far below the standards of accreditation).
It also highlights the advisability of institutions falling ‘well below the standards of accreditation’ and specifically to simplify the accreditation process for the first cycle and reduce the periodicity for re-accreditation to three years from the present six years.
The committee noted that multiple agencies such as AICTE, NAAC, NBA and NIRF ask institutions to submit data at different times in a year, which is a major reason for “discrepancies” in data and suggested data integration. that can be a set of canonical data. is used by all.
“There should be single point data entry by HEIs with provision for annual updates, handling and crowdsourcing of collateral data for validation of input data and confidence-building measures (replacing current manual verification and reducing dependence on travel of individual teams) ), Application Programming Interface (API) to push data from various sources to a centralized database which is being developed under the ‘One Nation One Data (ONOD)’ portal.
The ONOD platform provides single-window access to the database of existing higher education institutions in the country with open API integration, allowing only the user’s consent and necessary information to be shared with the institutions.
The committee suggested developing a ‘Unified Elicitation Tool’ to collect a superset of data from higher education institutions with an in-built design for collateral cross-checking for authenticity.
It was also noted that the current Data Verification and Validation (DVV) exercise is linked to third parties and higher education institutions. “The role of NAAC is very limited and sometimes there is a lack of proper understanding of the data presented by the DVV partners,” it said.
It further said that at present, there is a lack of balance in the composition of the peerages, especially in the category of universities. It is populated by members of public institutions with minimal private HEI representation.
“The need to address inherent biases, adequate access control and security features, ingestion of consistent data (with appropriate quality checks) in a single format (with applicable required variables), flexible and robust data management plan and compatibility with national digital framework,” it said.
The report said that the transition to the new system of accreditation should be done by the concerned agencies by December 31 this year.