First private accreditation body for varsities set up

Even as the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority Bill for higher education remains to be passed by Parliament, the country's first private accreditation body came into being on Friday.

Registered as a non-profit council, the Indian Centre for Assessment and Accreditation (ICAA), with Manipal University head T V Mohandas Pai as chairman and former University Grants Commission ( UGC) chairman Arun Nigavekar as chief advisor, aims at monitoring and assessing universities on a set of criteria that would keep in mind the domestic realities and international expectations .

At a press conference here, Mohandas Pai said universities would be ranked based on access, equity and quality. "Within nine months, a complete set of procedures will be in place," he said.

There are two government accreditation agencies in the country - the National Assessment and Accreditation Council and the National Board of Accreditation. "In 19 years, these agencies have accredited only 28% of universities and 14% of colleges," said S P Thyagarajan, former vice-chancellor of the University of Madras. "With grading of colleges gaining recognition, it's time we had a private body that will ensure transparency while assessing universities and colleges."

Some of the ICAA members stressed the decline in global ranking of Indian varsities over the years. While in 2009 and 2010 some Indian Institutes of Technology were within the top 200, no Indian university featured in the top 200 in 2012, according to 2011 rating of UK-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), which specializes in education and study abroad. In 2012, Chinese varsities made it to the top 50 and a few Middle East institutions to the top 100, the council said.

Private agencies will be allowed to rate institutions to "create a healthy competitive environment", according to the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010.

ICAA, which has partnered QS, will include agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan, scientist V Ponraj, VIT chancellor G Viswanathan and National University of Singapore vice-president Prof Seeram Ramakrishna as its council members. It will function under the human resource development ministry.

Private varsities bill gets nod despite opposition

Punjab assembly passed two controversial bills on Friday, paving the way for two private universities to come up in the state even as the treasury benches ridiculed private varsities terming them as teaching shops set up to mint money.

Even as the opposition boycotted the session and did not debate the bills, the treasury benches seemed to have taken over the opposition's role as several legislators of the ruling SAD-BJP alliance slammed the private universities and raised apprehension that these would not be in the interest of the students. Despite this, the Desh Bhagat University Bill and the DAV University Bill were okayed.

SAD MLA Som Prakash said, "Lovely Professional University was set up in 2005 and has more than 25,000 students from 26 nations. But... the standard of education needs to be monitored. In a survey done by metro man E Sreedharan, it was found that only 21% of MBA students are capable of jobs, only 12% of engineers can be recruited directly and the rest need training and 36% of students passing out of private universities are not qualified for jobs despite training."

Nirmal Singh, another SAD MLA, said, "Private institutions have no seats for the poor. Even at places where they have taken panchayat land from villages on discounted prices they have not bothered to give concession to village children. Government must ensure that they follow norms."