The number of institutions graded by the National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) has gone down in Bihar drastically, with the state left with just 34 accredited colleges and two universities, according to the data available with the State Higher Education Council (SHEC).
The number of NAAC accredited institutions had reached 139 a few years ago, but officials said indifference of many institutions to get themselves revalidated timely and submit the self-study report (SSR) during the Covid-19 pandemic and immediately after has led to many of them losing their grades.
Now, December 31, 2022, is the deadline for submitting SSR by those willing to get their validity renewed.
Among the seven colleges graded A earlier, only two — Patna Women’s College and St Xavier’s College — have remained in the category. Their validity will expire on December 31, 2023.
For AN College, the validity expired recently on October 29, 2022. For College of Commerce, Arts & Science, the validity had expired last year only, but it was revalidated up to October 2022 in view of Covid-19 pandemic after the institution applied for it. The accreditation of Millat Training College also expired on June 8, 2022.
Of just two universities that remain accredited with NAAC against seven earlier, one is the Chanakya National Law University (CNLU) and the other is Patna University (PU), which was graded for the first time three years ago only.
However, some universities could never get NAAC accreditation, while many who had got it earlier could not get it revalidated.
“There was a meeting of NAAC in Bangalore on November 10 and we plan to initiate fresh and targeted efforts in the light of the outcome of that meeting. A meeting of all vice chancellors was called on November 22 by additional chief secretary (education) Dipak Kumar Singh to discuss the way ahead. We hope to get at least one most suitable institution accredited in every district, and later it would be scaled up in a phased manner,” said NK Agarwal, academic advisor to the SHEC, who has been made the nodal officer for the work.
The ACS said that the state government was committed to getting all the institutions accredited in a phase-wise manner, as it was a basic requirement now to avail many benefits. “A meeting of vice chancellors and college principals from the state with a team of NAAC Bangalore is also under consideration to discuss the state’s road map,” he said.
Under the Centre’s new education policy (NEP), accreditation is a basic requirement, linked to funding.
Since 2013, when the Centre first made accreditation a mandatory requirement for (Rashtriya Uchchtar Shiksha Abhiyan) funding, there was a rush by institutions to get accredited, but Bihar has been slow on this count despite the fact that all institutions have to get accredited by 2022.
“The lukewarm response in Bihar is because many institutions here got poor grades in the past due to severe shortage of teachers, poor student feedback, inadequate infrastructure, missing extra-curricular activities, lack of research, erratic classes and late academic sessions, absence from the National Institutional Framework Ranking (NIRF) and missing choice-based credit system (CBCS). Patna University could somehow start CBCS from this year. Elsewhere, semester system is also yet to start, while Delhi University and other universities have moved towards four-year integrated system at the graduation level as per NEP. The problem is lack of initiative at the level of institutions. With academic sessions up to 2-3 years late, accreditation is a wishful thinking,” said a senior official of the SHEC.
SHEC vice chairman Kameshwar Jha said a committee formed to address the accreditation issue last year had submitted its detailed report and a road map that would need to be followed to reverse the trend. “It is unfortunate that the institutions are not showing any interest and the numbers have dropped so much. It will affect their funding in future. What is worse, 95% of the colleges don’t have regular principals and the leadership at both the university level and the college level is mostly missing to take it forward. Principals and VCs, holdings additional charges elsehwere, don’t do any good. In the past also, NAAC director and teams from there visited Bihar to encourage colleges and universities for accreditation, but not much has improved despite constant prodding,” he said.
