SRINAGAR, JUNE 16: The Department of Higher Education has clarified a news story regarding NAAC accreditation of Degree Colleges in Jammu and Kashmir.
“It is clarified that assessment norms of the NAAC have undergone certain changes in recent times under which obtaining higher grades of A and A ++ and also maintaining earlier NAAC gradings of educational institutions have become a challenge for the Higher Education institutions. 70% of the assessment is virtually machine driven and in this process local difficulties and vagaries can easily miss deserving consideration. Accordingly, this concern is under a frank and open discussion at the national level and hence is not outside the purview of revision,” an official statement said.
“Since the NAAC accreditation has been made a precondition for receiving financial assistance of national level bodies including UGC, RUSA, etc, the state of Jammu and Kashmir has taken the challenge of getting all its eligible higher education institutions accredited at the hands of assessing agencies like NAAC, NIRF, AICTE, NBA etc within the timeline of 2022 set as a national level target,” the statement said.
“The Department of Higher Education is conscious that the newly established colleges shall require substantial time to achieve perfection with regard to the seven main criterions of NAAC assessment. These colleges being in infancy cannot be expected to have well-established systems for student placements, corporate MoUs, IT-supported academic transactions, skilling and vocational development of students, state of the art and inter-disciplinary research lab facilities which are some benchmarks for fetching highest NAAC grades,” it said.
“The Department derives the satisfaction that the NAAC authorities have established a special cell at its Bangalore headquarters to facilitate the degree colleges of the state of Jammu and Kashmir to sail through the mandatory stages of submission of IIQA, Student Satisfaction Survey, Data Verification and Validation, Submission of Self Study Report and NAAC peer team visits etc which require a lot of honest effort and dedication of stakeholders including students, teachers, support staff, parents, alumni and the administrative department. The Department also records its appreciation for the newly established colleges for having exhibited the passion and courage for presenting themselves for NAAC accreditation despite their difficulties and challenges with regard to infrastructure, permanent faculty and student support systems.
The Department is honestly committed to providing support and necessary handholding to all the higher education institutions in their journey and aspirations for achieving excellence in all aspects of their functioning. The Department is proudly announcing that because of the efforts of all the stakeholders the number of accredited colleges with various NAAC rankings has swelled from 13 odd (April 2019) to around 30 at present while all remaining eligible colleges are at various stages of the accreditation process,” the statement added.
