T colleges ignore NAAC tag, put education quality under lens

T colleges ignore NAAC tag, put education quality under lens

No Accreditation For About 90% T Colleges

State To Study Reasons, Guide Institutes

Preeti.Biswas@timesgroup.com

Hyderabad:28.10.2021

With only 11% of higher educational institutions in Telangana being accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the council has now asked the state higher education department officials to take up an internal survey to know the reasons for not initiating or accelerating the accreditation process.

The NAAC had conducted a state-wise analysis of accredited higher education institutions in Telangana and released a report on October 26 in Bengaluru.

The report indicates that of the 1,976 colleges in Telangana, only 141 have a valid accreditation. Of these, 35 are government colleges, 19 are grant-in-aid colleges and 87 are private or self-financed colleges. Nationally, 21% colleges are NAAC accredited.

The NAAC accreditation assesses institutions on teaching, learning and evaluation, research and innovations, infrastructure and learning resources, student support and progression, governance and management, helping students to gauge quality of education in an institute. Based on the performance in each aspect, institutions are awarded grades A+, A, B++, B+, B, C and D.

While other states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala fare much better, Telangana is yet to make a mark.

Officials from the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE) said there was no resistance among college managements to undergo NAAC assessment.

“Lower percentage of accredited colleges in Telangana is due to various shortcomings, especially in rural areas. Based on NAAC findings, we would try to understand the limitations of colleges and universities and accordingly work with them. We have also decided to financially help institutions in preparing NAAC documentations,” said R Limbadri, TSCHE chairman.

The NAAC officials said as the accreditation process was voluntary earlier, many did not come forward in the last many years.

“Now that the NAAC accreditation has been made mandatory to seek funds under Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan scheme and other central schemes, many colleges are in the fray. Massive handholding is required to encourage institutions for accreditation,” said NAAC director SC Sharma.

As per NAAC figures, more than 200 colleges from Telangana are now at various stages to secure NAAC accreditation.

Students move out of T for better courses

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad:

Poor quality of professional courses in Telangana has led to a gradual migration of students to neighbouring states, with several seats left vacant in courses such as engineering, management, BEd and law among others As per the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) report, more than 1.34 lakh engineering seats, 8,299 B Pharmacy seats and 33,632 management seats had no takers between academic year 2015-16 and 2018-19.

Experts admit that admissions in Telangana dropped as the exodus to deemed-to-be-universities and private universities in neighbouring states increased in the past few years.

“The deemed-to-be-universities are more innovative in curriculum. There is a huge pool of courses to choose and exposure is also higher. Therefore, they are in high demand compared to local institutions,” said DN Reddy, former vice-chancellor of JNTUH.

Vacancies and no research major challenges

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad:

Vacant teaching positions, poor upkeep of institutions and no research in Telangana’s institutes have been identified as major challenges by NAAC.

“In almost all universities, a large number of faculty positions are lying vacant. The process of filling of vacancies for teaching and non-teaching staff has not been taken up. Consequently, the faculty student ratio as well as cadre ratio is low and there is dearth of permanent faculty,” read the report.

It said that even in colleges, there are very few permanent staff members and there needs to be a drastic improvement in faculty cadre ratio. Experts said that lack of faculty members has a cascading effect on the quality of education at large.

“When there are not enough faculty members, quality of teaching takes a backseat. Existing staff gets overburdened with many other responsibilities due to which neither are they able to take up enough research work nor are they able to guide enough PhD scholars,” said DN Reddy, former vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad.

In addition to this, poor industry linkages and feedback mechanism, academic audits etc are among the other challenges that have been identified hindering the quality of education in higher institutions in the state.