BANGALORE: Gearing up for institutional re-accreditation of a new batch of degree colleges, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has brought out a manual for <149>self-study for the accredited institutions and urged them to submit a Re-Accreditation Report (RAR) before six years from the date of first accreditation.

All colleges, which had their first accreditation in the year 1999 / <149>2000 are eligible for re-accreditation and they can submit their RAR anytime now. NAAC teams will visit such colleges so as <149>to complete the process by March 31, 2006, they said. The first accreditation outcome is valid for five years.

About 100 colleges are now ready for re-accreditation across the country, including 15 in Karnataka. "Earlier, the response for NAAC accreditation was mainly from Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. That is why most re-accreditation requests are coming from the S<149>outhern States," the NAAC director, V.S. Prasad, told The Hindu .

In the first batch, NAAC had re-assessed and accredited 19 colleges. These included the city<149>-based Jyoti Nivas College and Christ College and St. Agnes College in Mangalore.

The accredited colleges are required to get their activities oriented to the five core values of contributing to national development, fostering global competencies among students, inculcating a value system among them, promoting the use of technology, and quest for excellence. These values and the impact of the first assessment will provide the overall framework for re-accreditation, according to Prof. Prasad.

The re-accreditation process will examine how the accredited colleges prepared their students with global competencies. "This requires the colleges to be innovative, creative and entrepreneurial in their approach to skill development among students. It may involve collaborating with industries, networking with the neighbourhood and fostering a close relationship between the world of work and the world of learning."

The colleges are also required to focus on the action taken on the first accreditation outcome. "It is to bring down subjectivity and make the quality measurement more accurate that in the reaccredidation context, while retaining the same seven criteria as before, several sub-areas under each criterion that enabled greater evaluative focus are added."

The seven criteria are: curricular aspects:<149> teaching-learning and evaluation; research, consultancy and extension; infrastructure and learning resources; student support and progression; organisation and management, and healthy practices.

The same four-stage process of the first accreditation — evolving pre-determined criteria for assessment, submission of self-study report by an institution, peer validation and final decision by NAAC — will be followed for re-accreditation too.

Besides, "the first assessment having initiated a quality culture among the higher education institutions, re-accreditation will further strengthen those initiatives," Prof. Prasad said.

Under the quest for excellence, the accredited colleges are required to set up internal quality assurance cells (IQAC) and identify the strengths and weaknesses in the processes of teaching and learning related to NAAC's core values.

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