The Ministry of Education (MoE) on March 11, 2024, issued Transformative Reforms for Strengthening Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education Institutions in India.
The following has been stated: -
• The imperative for strengthening the assessment and accreditation of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) has been imminent, especially to conform to the NEP 2020 which envisions a National Accreditation Council (NAC) as one of the four verticals of the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI).
•These reforms have been proposed with a strategic intent to be consistent with the Vision of NEP 2020, adopt, right away, a simple, trust-based, credible, objective, and rationalized system for approval, accreditation, and ranking of HEIs, with
(a)a verifiable and secured centralized database.
(b)technology-driven modern systems that could replace/minimise manual involvement.
(c)mentoring and incentivizing schemes for raising their participation as well as accreditation levels, towards eminence, significance, and global acclaim.
•For transforming the Regulatory System of Higher Education, the NEP 2020 envisions that the distinct functions of regulation, accreditation, funding, and academic standard setting will be performed by distinct, independent, and empowered bodies, to be set up as four independent verticals working synergistically within one umbrella institution, the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI).
•One of the four verticals of HECI, viz. National Accreditation Council (NAC), has been envisaged as the ‘meta-accrediting body’ with responsibility for overseeing and supervising an independent ecosystem of accrediting and ranking of institutions and programs.
•In turn, all HEIs will aim, through their Institutional Development Plans (IDPs), to attain the highest level of accreditation over the next 15 years, and thereby eventually aim to function as self-governing, degree-granting institutions/clusters.
•Notably, there have been concerns about the low level of willingness of HEIs to volunteer for the assessment and accreditation process besides the cumbersome, all-encompassing information requirements (much of which may not be completely applicable for diverse categories of HEIs), overarching subjective processes, inconsistencies between assessments of HEIs by different agencies, etc.
The detailed notification is given in the document attached below.
