No Development Grants to Colleges & Universities Without NAAC Accreditation

GUWAHATI: The Assam Government has decided not to give development grants to colleges and universities which do not have NAAC accreditation. With an aim to ensure quality education the University Grants Commission (UGC) has made it mandatory for all universities, colleges and institutions of higher learning to obtain accreditation certificates from National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). The accreditation helps an institution to identify its strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities.

The action plan recently approved by the State Higher Education department to improve the standards of colleges and universities has made it clear that only those institutions of higher education will be eligible to receive state level development grant provided which have valid NAAC accreditation. Without NAAC accreditation a college or university will get grant only if it has submitted the institutional informational for quality assessment to NAAC for the next cycle of accreditation or it is newly established.

The new rule will come into effect from the next academic session scheduled to start from August in 2019.

The new action plan has been prepared following poor performance of colleges and universities of the State in NAAC assessment. Rewards and incentives will be given to those institutions who have achieved Grade A and above.

The action plan says currently only about one third of the institutions of higher education of Assam have valid NAAC accreditation and the grading achieved by these institutions are not satisfactory in comparison to other States of the country.

According to the action plan there are no A++ or A+ or equivalent institutions of higher education in the State and the number of A grade instituions is only 16.

The UGC has made assessment and accreditation mandatory for all colleges and universities and the outcome has been linked to financial incentives to institutions under various components of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA).

The action plan says its primary aims are to bring the maximum possible number of institutions of higher education under the accreditation umbrella and work for securing higher grades in NAAC’s assessment and accreditation.

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