Assessment and accreditation - a new focus

THE RECENT announcement by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and UGC, setting the outer time limit for the universities and colleges to undergo assessment and accreditation at the end of this current year and 2003 respectively, has once again brought to focus the relevance and importance of the accreditation process in ensuring quality in higher education. At the outset, it should be understood that by doing so, the national bodies are merely reiterating their existing mandate for review before funding. Such a mandate is explicit and the assessment is externalised for the first time.

Assessment and accreditation as an External Quality Assurance (EQA) mechanism for higher education has emerged as the accepted and widely adopted method of promoting the quality assurance world over during the past decade or so. It is the option evolving out of the plethora of traditional mechanisms such as inspection, control, affiliation and recognition. These traditional regulatory mechanisms used by the providers (the government in our case) are to ensure that the essential requirements are in place at the institutions and that a minimal performance has taken place. These conventional methods have been used in the form of built-in internal checks and are routinised over the years. They have, become cursory and fragmentary without appreciably motivating the concern for quality. These were probably adequate when the system of education was relatively smaller.

The Indian higher education system as a whole, has become one of the largest in the world. There are many institutions now that are run by the private initiatives without support from the government. The technological and other socio-economic developments have changed the structure and the nature of the job market. These changes have brought a demand for quality education with internationally acceptable `standards' to be provided to even a larger population of students. This requires that national bodies like MHRD and UGC should maximise their inputs, both in terms of substantial investment and effective strategies, to ensure the quality of the educational output. Assessment and accreditation as an external quality assurance mechanism is one such effective strategy of quality enhancement. This perception has resulted in the world-wide acceptance of the EQA mechanism as an effective tool to ensure the quality of education.

This shift in focus is evident all over the world. More than 100 countries have established their own national assessment agencies. The U.S. has been following this system for nearly a century. The U.K. and a number of European and Commonwealth countries have also established their national accreditation agencies. In India, the national agency for assessment and accreditation, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) was established in 1994, on the recommendations of the National Policy of Education and its sequential Programme of Action (POA).

Although NAAC was established, the response from the universities and colleges for assessment has been limited, possibly because it is only a voluntary option, with a tacit understanding that the funding agencies as stakeholders would take the assessment outcome into consideration for funding. It is just like students and parents who use the outcome of such accreditation for choosing the institution for further studies.

On the other hand, the experience of other countries has been quite different and positive. The Higher Education Quality Council (HEQC) of the U.K., which has now been replaced by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) has already completed one cycle of institutional reviews and now the QAA has commenced the second cycle of ``continuation audit''.

The QAA, since its inception in 1997, has also completed one cycle of their programme assessment. This was possible because it is mandatory on the part of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFC) in U.K., the British counterpart of our UGC, to link its funding with the assessment. Likewise, most of the countries that have established their national bodies, more or less at the same time when NAAC was established, have also completed one or more cycles, either because they have linked funding to assessment or they have fewer universities and colleges than in India. In the U.S., though the process is still considered voluntary, several cycles of accreditation could be completed largely because the student aid fund of federal and state governments are decisively linked to assessment. Leading universities such as John Hopkins, Harvard and Stanford got themselves assessed and accredited in order to attract students who depend on the student aid fund (fellowships) for pursuing their higher education interests. Oxford and Cambridge in the U.K. are no exceptions.

No institution gets grants or subsidies, without assessment in some form or the other. Even the UGC's development and other special grants under the plan or non-plan funds are ``sanctioned'' to the universities and colleges only after the ``visiting teams'' visit and assess their performance at the beginning of every plan period. And this has been the practice over the last 40 years, ever since the UGC was established. The institutions have never been hesitant to undergo reviews by the visiting teams because of explicitness of the linkage with funding. It is evident from the fact that the entire assessment reviews of all the universities and colleges for the UGCs IX Plan development grants were completed in a record time of about four months very recently. Where such linkages are not explicit, there is always some reluctance.

It is in this context that one should view the recent announcement by MHRD and UGC fixing a time frame for the institutions to get themselves assessed by NAAC. This is the first time the linking of funding with the accreditation process is made explicit formally. This need not be viewed as an imposition; rather it is a positive step to help institutions to improve the standard of their offering. Fixing a time limit is only to complete the intended exercise effectively.

After all, accreditation by a national agency like NAAC is based on the unified and comprehensive assessment made on certain international format for a broader use, unlike some of the existing mechanisms like inspection and fund specific assessments. This general and comprehensive assessment, which is valid for at least five years, will facilitate the governmental and other agencies for the speedy disbursement of various grants like in the single window system.

Linking funding with accreditation need not create undue concerns. There are many institutions that draw their support from multiple sources. For example, the state universities are largely dependent on the state governments for their sustenance and receive very little from the UGC, compared to their budget. The IITs, IIMs and agricultural universities, are not funded at all by the UGC. There are more than 5000 colleges that do not come under 12b status including the hundreds of self-financing colleges promoted in recent years and, therefore, are not dependent on UGC for funds. Many of the deemed universities are funded neither by UGC nor by MHRD. There are also a few universities that come under this category. Hence, the fear of the consequence of linkage between assessment and funding is not real.

Assessment need not always be linked to funding. Recently, the Tamil Nadu government, through the State Council for Higher Education, resolved to recommend only those colleges which are accredited and rated high, for either autonomous or deemed university status. Similar moves are on in Bihar and Karnataka. Recently the Quality Council of India (QCI), the organisation that undertakes the review for ISO status has indicated that in the education sector, they would take up only the institutions which have already been accredited by NAAC/NBA. International funding agencies for research also look for the accreditation status of an institution, even if the project proposals from the individuals or groups are found acceptable. This will be true for some of the national funding agencies like DST.

NAAC's process will remain voluntary as it is designed to serve many different beneficiaries such as governments, funding agencies, students, parents, employers and society at large. If the funding agencies, as one of the stakeholders, link their support to the process of accreditation, it shows their legitimate intention to support quality output, without duplicating the effort. The central government (MHRD) and one of their affiliates have expressed their decision to link their support with accreditation. The major provider of higher education, the state governments, is yet to extend such a link up.

A. GNANAM & ANTONY STELLA

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