Dear Students,
LAST WEEK WE ASKED: Do you think UGC’s move to make accreditation mandatory for higher education institutions will help better the quality of higher education institutions in the country?
BEST RESPONSE
Planning in education sector in India is highly skewed with a few esteemed Central Universities and autonomous state run colleges there exist a handful of private institutions of repute. Reasons loudly say that the higher education in the private sector has been left only as a profit seeking avenue in India. To evade taxes and to park black money into safe havens many fraudulent institutions are set up only to mislead parents and students. Apart from this, even the not-fraud-but-simply-running institutions don't even meet the simple standards of good faculty, course contents, labs, campus placements etc. A written set of guidelines with a mandatory accreditation will enable a transparent and quality education system to prevail and thus this long awaited move is highly welcomed.
--Nandish Agarwal, Galgotias College of Engineering and Technology, Greater Noida
OTHER RESPONSES
For development in any field we need creativity and innovation for change and to achieve growth. After making primary education compulsory for all the children in India, it’s the turn to make higher education compulsory and improve our higher education system. This will not only help in employment opportunities to the young and educated but also better the economic growth of our country.
--Vishal Rajai, St. Kabir Institute of Professional Studies, Ahmedabad
Accreditation helps an institution to identify its strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities. As per the notification the objective of making accreditation mandatory is to get quality education. The accreditation is also aimed to facilitate institutions to acquire international recognition, cross-border and trans-national collaborations; to facilitate teachers achieve and maintain teaching and research standards. The accreditation will also provide an opportunity to all stakeholders i.e. students, teachers and non-teaching employees, to submit their views on matters of academic quality. Accreditation of educational institutions will help students assess the quality of programs and courses, physical infrastructure and faculty. Accreditation is not a one-time process and education institutions should carry out accreditation on a regular basis.
--Lokesh Pravin Jain, Vishwakarma Institute of Management, Pune (Maharashtra).
The higher education system in India is expanding with huge disparities among the institutions and vast differences in infrastructure facilities exist between public and private institutions. Against this backdrop, it is appropriate to have a mechanism that will set benchmarks to judge the credentials of an institution. Accreditation helps an institution identify its strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities. Besides, it provides an opportunity to students, teachers and non-teaching staff to submit their views on academic quality. Thus, academic performance of an institution is reviewed by UGC time to time. This move will also help institutions to acquire international recognition.
--Diwanshu Dudeja, ITM University, Gurgaon
The UGC’s move has been long due. All the higher education institutions need to fulfil certain minimum requirements. This accreditation measures an institution on various parameters like infrastructure, faculty quality, learning environment, pedagogy, etc which are of paramount importance for the grooming of any student. The institutions will be bound to provide quality education to the students in order to get accredited. Considering that accreditation is a continuous process the institutions will also have the responsibility of maintaining their quality standards. This will ensure that we do not have frivolous institutions fleecing the students by giving them wrong hopes.
--Shivang Ganatra, IIM Ranchi
At present, certain institutes in India are operating without UGC's recognition who lack behind in critique on several parameters including research work to extracurricular activities. In the view of such prevailing circumstances, a mandatory accreditation for higher education institutes would be a sincere and commendable move towards betterment of quality. By enforcing UGC accreditation, a must have for institutes will bind them to abide by the necessary norms. This will enhance the quality of especially tier 2 or 3 colleges, bringing them to the level of national competence, which have a major role in producing large number of graduates yearly.
--Shivam Chhabra, Integral University, Lucknow
Amidst expanding huge disparities among the institutions and vast differences in infrastructure facilities existing between public and private institutions, UGC's move to make accreditation mandatory for higher education institutions is commendable. It would help education institution get government financial assistance under the programmes of UGC, further accreditation will act as benchmarks cautioning potential candidates seeking admission about the quality of institutes. However, there are 620 universities and more than 35,000 colleges in the country, the quality should not be compromised while furnishing this herculean task.
--Debayan Daw, ITM University, Gurgaon
Accreditation helps an organization benchmark the best practices offered by different institutions. It helps to build up high quality course curriculum and also the process as well. The era of globalization made the academic institution to go for international collaborations. Any institution abroad when they look for collaborators the easiest parameter to decide on international collaboration is the accreditation. Also the accreditation process developed by UGC helps any institution to revisit the mission objective linkage as well as objectives with the output of the program.
--Pratik Bairagi, Regional College of Management (Autonomous), Bhubaneswar
Higher education Institutions in India have mushroomed throughout the country in recent times. These Institutions provides shoddy education as they lack of infrastructure, teachers, modern amenities etc. They have just been opened to mint money without giving due and just benefit to the students. India needs quality higher Education institutions to produce quality research scholars, engineers, doctors, MBAs etc. So that India can maintain its growth in the long run. Hence UGC move is a step in the right direction.
--Nilaya Mitash Shanker, Department Of Management Studies, IIT Roorkee
Of course UGC's move will make higher education institute to perform better because all institute will follow the same system and the system will have great power to control all the institute. To fulfil the criteria provided by UGC & to compete with other institute, all institute will spontaneously improve the quality of education. Through this overall quality of education will improve.
--Sejal Rathod, St.Kabir Institute of Professional Study
Your responses should reach us at edu@business-standard.com by Monday evening every week. Please ensure that your responses do not exceed 100 words. Avoid attachments and email your full name, institute's name, batch and complete mailing address. The student who gives the 'Best Response' will be awarded Rs 500.
THIS WEEK'S QUESTION: Do you think appointment of directors at education institutions should be done without interference from the Ministry of Human Resource Development?
