Govt panel recommends unified accreditation for Higher Education Institutes including IITs

In a bid to propose a complete overhaul of the current system, the central government’s Overarching Committee has put forth several significant recommendations to reform the assessment and accreditation system of higher education institutions (HEIs) in India, further suggesting a more simplified system, instead of the present 8-point grading system of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). In its report released on Friday, 19 May 2023, the committee while highlighting that only 30 percent of the HEIs in India are accredited suggested that it requires an “Accredited, Awaiting Accreditation and Not Accredited” system. Among the few recommendations that have been made in the report include bringing the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) under the umbrella of a unified accreditation process, transitioning to a binary accreditation system, focusing on outcomes, establishing a new body for data validation and verification, utilizing crowdsourcing for data verification, implementing single-point data entry through APIs, imposing penalties for incorrect submissions, and providing mentoring to institutions that fall below the set standards. Further recognising the need to simplify the accreditation process in line with the efforts of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), and the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF), the report emphasizes the importance of streamlining and synergizing these entities. Notably, the report came amid the recent controversies surrounding certain alleged “irregularities” in the functioning of the NAAC in the grading process. Recommendations in the Centre’s Overarching Committee The report titled ‘Transformative Reforms for Strengthening Periodic Assessment and Accreditation of All Higher Educational Institutions in India’ noted that the reforms have been proposed with a strategic intent of creating a credible, objective, and rationalised system for approval, accreditation, and ranking of HEIs, with a verifiable and secured centralized database; technology-driven modern systems that could replace/minimize manual involvement; and mentoring and incentivising schemes for raising their participation as well as accreditation levels, towards global acclaim. It further suggested the conclusion of IITs within the unified accreditation system for all HEIs and thus recommended a transition from the current eight-point grading system of NAAC to an adapted Binary Accreditation System. It also emphasised the mentoring of institutions that fall significantly below the accreditation standards.
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