NAAC Clarification: 'Process of Assessment and Accreditation is transparent'

NEW DELHI: Clarifying on the alleged irregularities in the functioning, the NAAC said that the entire process of Assessment and Accreditation is transparent. The statement comes after the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) chairman Bhushan Patwardhan resigned from the post alleging that universities used malpractices to receive “questionable grades”.

“It may be pointed out that processes within NAAC are continuously being improved so that assessment and accreditation of the educational intuitions are done transparently and professionally,” NAAC, an autonomous institution of the University Grants Commission (UGC) said.

As per the mandate of NAAC, the entire process of Accreditation and Assessment is robust, transparent, ICT-driven and automated, it stated.

The ex-NAAC chief Bhushan Patwardhan in a letter dated February 26 expressed his apprehensions about “the possibility of vested interests, malpractices, and nexus among the persons concerned, offering thereby a green corridor by presumably manipulating ICT, DVV and PTV processes leading to the awarding of questionable grades to some HEIs.”

To this, the NAAC said: “The system cannot be compromised because the whole process is decentralized, transparent and accessible to the stakeholders through a user-friendly portal and dashboard at all stages of the assessment and accreditation process.”

It also said that it has constituted three committees to deal with the issues related to the Accreditation of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs).

One of the committee was under the chairmanship of Bhushan Patwardhan was set up for a roadmap to develop the National Accreditation Council (NAC) through the synchronized working of the NAAC, National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).

The other two committees under the leadership of MK Sridhar, UGC member and Surender Prasad, former NBA chairman and IIT Delhi director to deal with the accreditation related issues in universities and to rationalize the present system of recognition and ranking by multiple agencies, respectively.

How the grading process of universities work?

NAAC provided five facts about the assessment and accreditation process. The first one explained about the selection process of experts and the pool of assessors involved in the accreditation process.

Explaining how the grading process of universities carried out, the NAAC said it has four fool-proof steps, “one: submission of Peer Team Report along with grade; two: scrutiny by Standing Committee which is a Sub- Committee of Executive Committee; three: declaration of results by NAAC and four: ratification of the results by Executive Committee”.

It reiterated that there “is no possibility of manipulating the process leading to the awarding of grades”.