Chennai: Referring to the new changes made to the accreditation process, professor V.S. Chauhan, chairman, executive committee, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (Naac), said the council will not send assessment teams to higher educational institutions which do not satisfy at least 30 per cent of the new criteria.
The accreditation body will award grades based on seven indicators including curricular aspects, teaching-learning and evaluation, research and consultancy, infrastructure and learning resources, student support and progression.
“The colleges which do not fulfil the minimum criteria can apply for the assessment next year,” he said while addressing the principals of affiliated colleges to Madras University here.
He further said, “The new template for accreditation will be released on August 10. The weightage to field inspection will be reduced to 30 per cent in deciding the grade of an institution.”
Earlier, the accreditation body used to give 100 per cent weightage for the inspections in deciding grades.
“Software is developed to assess the data submitted by the educational institutions. Seventy percent of the data will be processed by software and a third party will independently look into the data,” Mr Chauhan said.
The new system provides 20 per cent weightage to online student satisfaction survey (SSS) from this year. Institutions will first prepare the self-study report and upload it online for response and feedback from students.
Stating that the new accreditation method will be friendly to the educational institutions, he said, “The colleges will be permitted to choose the departments for the assessment.”
V.S.Chauhan, also the acting chairman of UGC, said the commission is mulling about giving accreditation work to the independent agencies like the western countries. “We may give the work to three to four agencies with the standard guidelines. We are yet to finalise details,” he told reporters after the seminar. “In future, the accreditation process will be more simplified to know whether an institution is good enough to provide a degree or not,” he added.
