Tamil Nadu colleges top in accreditation
Naac awaits ministry’s nod for expansion
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-11-12 05:22 GMT
Chennai: Even though accreditation for higher education institutions was made mandatory only a year ago, National Assessment and Accreditation Council (Naac) director Professor A.N.Rai says that the number of colleges and universities in Tamil Nadu getting Naac accreditation is much more than that of north Indian states.“Tamil Nadu has surpassed the national average rate of accreditation as we see more colleges from this state are getting accredited,” Prof Rai said while speaking to Deccan Chronicle on the sidelines of an international conference on ethics and responsible conduct of research at Sri Ramachandra University (SRU) on Tuesday.
The director pointed out that after accreditation was made mandatory last year, the number of accredited colleges went up five times. “We need to accredit 8,000 colleges every year for which we need more accrediting agencies. Naac does not have sufficient manpower to cover all of them,” he said. Lamenting that the council waits for the HRD ministry nod for the detailed project report it had submitted for expansion, Prof Rai said that the council needs at least 300 employees to perform its routine tasks.
“We have so far accredited 7,000 of 40,000 colleges in the country and need hundreds of accrediting agencies to accredit colleges every year. The National Accreditation Regulatory Authority bill is yet to be passed without which we cannot have private agencies for accreditation purposes,” he said. The director also raised concerns about lack of permanent faculty in several colleges.
“We have seen colleges which have no permanent faculty and some colleges even borrow books from other institutions to place it in their library during the Naac team visit,” Prof Rai noted.Earlier in his welcome address, Professor S.P. Thyagarajan, professor of eminence and dean (research) at SRU said that their university had started a programme in 2009 to teach research ethics to students, which other can replicate.