A & A - Quantitative Metrics - A Bird's Eye View

National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has strived hard to safeguard and improve the academic standards and quality of higher education in India since 1995. In spite of 25 years of continuous monitoring and assessing the quality of education of HEI’s and accreditation, the outcome is not encouraging with respect to the number of great institutions. This is high time that the gap is analyzed, and the lacunae between the assessment process by NAAC and the preparedness of institutions for assessment is identified. Based on the feedback received by NAAC over a long period, many changes have been made from time to time in the process of assessment. In July 2017, NAAC drastically revised the process for the HEIs. The new process represents an explicit paradigm shift, making it ICT enabled, objective, scalable and robust. Again very recently, on 17/12/2019, they have modified and published manuals for HEI’s and reduced the number of metrics, both qualitative and quantitative. Though the new methodology is user friendly, an invisible lacuna has been observed that is evident from results. Many colleges which got A grade in the previous assessment have got B++ or B+ in this new methodology. In this scenario, an attempt is made to acquaint the stakeholders of the institutions regarding the overall A & A, in general, with a special emphasis on quantitative metrics, both essential and optional in particular. It also discusses in depth the basic problems facing the institution's preparedness.

Keywords: Accreditation, Assessment, CBCS, Emphasis, Environmental audit, Essential metrics, Feedback, HEIs, IQAC, IT infrastructure, Lacuna, Linkages, Mentoring, NAAC, New methodology, Optional metrics, Outcome, Qualitative metrics, Quantitative metrics, Recreation, Stakeholders.