NAAC Accreditation and Quality Shift in HEIs

 

Recently, in a get-together of Principals, a colleague of mine stated loudly that NAAC accreditation doesn’t really help improve quality of practices in a college. For reasons known to him best, he also said that I may not agree with what he said. Even before this colleague stated thus the thought has been around. It has become common place to run into fellow academicians who ask the what-has-accreditation-got-to-do-with-quality question. If one happens to be part of the college level Higher Education leadership, the question seems to make a lot of sense.

 This is so because during such leadership encounters, more often than not, one is reminded of umpteen instances of disconnect between the practices of many Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and the NAAC-scores. The performance bubble which was fully blown up to scale with the accreditation criteria shrinks back to the facts of the non-accredited past reality. In other words, the affairs at the HEIs drop back to the defaults which are pre-NAAC Peer Team visit levels. Life goes on till the festival returns after 5 years, with the next cycle. The documentation frenzy dies down and the Old Normal is welcomed. This is not to accept that the infrastructural additions often remain, often since certain rooms and provisions reassigned to meet the assessment criterion will be re-reassigned back to the traditional roles for which it has been used: Counseling Centre will allow itself to be called a classroom and the Research Scholars Room will unwillingly morph itself to a PG Classroom and the like.  Why does this happen? Why doesn’t the apparent quality shift persist?

 Gate Keeping Quality

The essential goal of assessment and accreditation is the raise of quality benchmarks at multiple levels of the HEIs. The seven criteria set by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), an autonomous institution by the University Grants Commission in 1994, to make quality the defining element of HEIs. NAAC accreditation process scrutinizes the teaching learning practices, research, facilities, policies, procedures, employability and outreach activities of an HEI under seven criteria. It is non-debatable that ever since NAAC accreditation is brought in, it has contributed to a number of quality-awareness building practices into the HEIs, even though at the individual HEI level this often varies from place to place significantly. There are HEIs worth pointing out which have altered or is in the process of altering the landscape of their institution significantly, thanks to NAAC. But those are often part of a minor group.

 Neither NAAC nor the accreditation procedure can be blamed for the said situation, even though the assessment and accreditation procedure may have rooms for improvement. If the idea of quality and quality practices do not sink in into the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) of an HEI, we need to explore the reasons for that in all earnestness. One of which has got to do with the question of ownership. Who owns quality? Who brings in quality? Who benefits from quality? Whose quality is it anyway? These are interesting questions related to the question of the ownership of quality. Many of the faculty/non-faculty members in HEIs tend to disown the ownership of quality willingly as it is convenient. Many others disown quality as they are unaware of their ownership rights. Still others keep away from claiming the ownership right since they are novice to the idea and are doubtful of taking the plunge and making the cut.  Some seem to subscribe to the thought that since it is the institution that is graded, the individuals matter less. They continue to bemoan the death / dearth of quality, and pass ironic remarks regarding the incapacity of the NAAC scores to up the quality bars.

 It is important that the individual members of the academic community of the HEI be made aware of the individual ownership of the idea of quality through a convincing leadership model. Quality is as much the responsibility of the teaching and the supporting staffs as much it is the job of the academic leadership of the institution. In a sense there is more of a responsibility on the part of the HEI leadership to drive the message home, not through the so named ‘Awareness Sessions', but through modeling those values and practices. Do it and show that it can be done, in short!

 The gatekeepers of quality in the HEIs are to be individuals too. If the individual contributions, whether in the form of  a funded project, a high quality publication, an editorial effort, a career-support scheme for students, an outreach linkage, the support from the HEI leadership should be concrete and loud. The said support doesn't always mean just a praise on the stage. It has to be material too. Loosening strings of the money bag, flexing norms to free time for extra research work, connecting them to known sources for ideas and professional rise, foregrounding them on all relevant platforms and bodies- the list is long. In short, appreciation and support can go a long way in making them work for 'their' project, 'their research paper, ‘their’ extension lectures, ‘their’ edited anthology, ‘their’ patents! 'Their': give them ownership so that they will begin to take themselves seriously and would try to push their performance limits. And, ‘their’ institution will grow in the bargain, with the ‘theirs’ adding up to ‘ours’ for the institution.

Internal Quality Assurance and IQAC Leadership

Ever since accreditation has become mandatory for the HEIs in India, a new leadership position has emerged in the hierarchy, that of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell Coordinator. The responsibilities of the IQAC Coordinator are specifically spelt out by the NAAC. The IQAC Coordinator may be a ‘senior /competent person’. One does come across instances where the seniority factor is overemphasized there by undermining the quality aspect. If this happens, the whole quality mission of the institution could be bogged down in avoidable power play and age/experience-dictated ego drives. As it is stated in the NAAC guideline, ‘devotion and commitment to improvement rather than mere institutional control is the basis for devising procedures and instruments for assuring quality’. A lot depends on the person who is assigned the role. Of late there has reportedly even been string-pulling and underhand deals to park certain key figures or figures who consider themselves as key, in the chair. In some HEIs these IQAC Coordinators who got themselves appointed, much to the disappointment of the sane many around, take the role as an opportunity to simply walk over those who go about their business with passion. There are even those IQAC Coordinators who feel they are equivalent to the Head of the institution and that no worm can creep, no event can run, no patent can register without her/his permission. This sure has a lot to do with the initial selection of such individuals. IQAC needs to be in the know, for sure. But that right to know can’t be presumed to be a right to boss over the colleagues, finally leading to a logjam. Any IQAC Coordinator who assumes such self-importance also needs to work on an Annual Plan, right at the beginning of each year and make it sync with the Dept / Club plans. Even this is possible only if the IQAC Leadership is ready to work with the team, not above the team.

Since IQAC coordinatorship is one of the pivotal leadership positions in HEIs, there has to be a formal, government level recognition of the same. For a person who is truly devoted to quality mission as directed by the HE watchdogs and agencies, it is demanding to do full justice to the academic workload prescribed and the academic-administrative work related to the IQAC coordinatorship. HEIs should place this at the policy level and seek formal recognition as well as financial perks for the position.  

On the other hand, being the IQAC Leader doesn’t exempt a faculty member from performing the assigned academic duties and confine oneself to the imagined rigors of the role. ‘Imagined’ because no passionate academician and responsible leader will find non-existent excuses to keep off one’s primary responsibility like engaging sessions or valuing answer scripts, there by negating the opportunity to provide a model for others to replicate. Any devoted leader who takes over as IQAC Coordinator will have a concrete Plan of Action on the table and that will relieve the person of the need to keep away from the basic academic responsibilities. The role we are talking about is, in a way, more demanding than that of any other leadership position in an institution of Higher Education. No individual with mean aspirations or mere hunger of power must be permitted to cling to it.

 Accreditation for score V/S Accreditation for Quality

 Why don’t the standards (or apparent scales of standards) which were evident during the NAAC accreditation Peer Team visit season stick? Who pushes the institutions to fall back to the old scales? Well, the fact is the hurriedly patched up narratives and claims to drive the scores with fast-cooked Qnms and Qlms, never were really reflections of the truly internalized practices in that HEI. The 'Internal' Quality Assurance Cells (IQACs) in HEIs face the daunting task of making a culture of quality take root in the institutions. The word ‘Internal’ here has to be taken in a personal sense too. Internal doesn’t simply refer to ‘inside the HEI’. It also has to be inside each Dept, each Cell, each Club, each body formed inside the HEI. ‘Internal’ has to refer to inside each faculty member and supporting staff too. ‘Internal’ has to signify each Head of the Dept. ‘Internal’ has to be, most importantly, a finger self-pointed by the Principal to herself / himself. It has to equally reflect back to the committee which runs the college, if there is one.

The HEIs must move to accreditation for quality from accreditation for scores. Such a switch calls for the ownership of quality mentioned above. The processes and procedures which the accreditation drive has brought in should be genuine, to begin with. Not a Wall Magazine as eyewash for the Peer Team, but a Wall Magazine which is stitched into the regular academic routine of a Dept of a class or a Club. Not a mere visit to a Club as a photo-cum-score opportunity, but a sustained relationship with that local club to introduce, run a course or a training regimen, or a practice for instance. Not a student award here-one-NAAC-year and gone-the-next-non-NAAC-year, but a full-fledged, followed-up scheme to raise the quality of student performance. Not an MoU to flash smiles to the camera, but one which is genuinely followed up and driven for results. This is never easy unless the quality consciousness is internalized for its own sake and promoted for 'their'-own sake. 

 Life after Accreditation

 Life in an HEI after a NAAC accreditation process is significant. There is a period in which there will be celebration of the deserving (or higher grades!) scored or the dampness which sets in when the grade sinks below what the HEI thinks it deserved. But past this, once the passions have cooled down, is when the system needs to be put in place or sustained, depending on where the HEI stands at that stage. If realistic framework for quality has been set, then those standards are to be sustained through relevant standard operating procedures. Otherwise the HEI will soon relapse to where it stood per-accreditation. If what happened during the accreditation assessment visit was a sham parade of cooked up documents, the HEI needs to shed the pretense and launch an earnest effort at building quality benchmarks from the scratch. 

 

When one speaks of pretenses, there is protest expected from many who may claim that their institutions never faked quality. It always depends on how one looks at quality. One's scale of quality is a reflection of the quality scales one is exposed to. Rather than being complacent about the higher quality of what one has achieved, it is a good exercise to compare with what others have. Periodic visits to other quality HEI environments and visits by external quality ambassadors to your HEI will surely help in this direction. The rather common practice of running an Academic and Administrative Audit (AAA) with bunch of friends, colleagues and yeah-sayers will sure help in consolidating the complacency. But, end of the day , it will never help power a shift to better quality because the team of well-wishers with whom the leadership of the HEI is on back patting terms will  not speak truth to peers!  

 Internalizing Good Practices

 Each institution can have an honest analysis as to where it stands in terms of the accreditation indices across all the seven criteria of NAAC. One of the earliest efforts of the IQACs of HEIs must be this. Such a huddle by the core team of the institution should yield Needs Analysis. This must be the blue print for quality for the next 5 years. This document, which will align with the Institutional Strategic Plan, is key to internalizing the quality quotient in the whole institution through the individual members. When such a plan is laid out, it is vital to provide the necessary support to the members of the teaching and supporting group at the institution. Often the faculty members may not be able to measure up to the stiff scales the institution unrealistically sets up. Even when the expectation is realistic, many may need support in many forms. Rather than organizing a workshop for workshop sake or for the sake of displaying a poster in an institutional group or fb page, care must be taken to hand-hold the struggling staff to walk them along the scales of quality. A mere presentation on writing a Fund Proposal may not mean much. But a byte by byte mentoring to ensure that the faculty member does it is the solution. Since most of them may not have thought of themselves professionally so high, they often need intellectual and emotional support. Extensive support is the answer, with quality inputs which is sustained long term.

 The Quality Switch 

All those who bemoan the lack of quality practices post NAAC accreditation process should introspect and revisit the system put in place at the HEI. They need to check if ever there is a system in place to begin with. If what happens is mere file building and document padding, it will never lead to a permanent switch to higher quality practices in an HEI.  Rather than aiming at quick scores, the HEIs must begin to aim at quality and scores follow.

 ----------------------------------------------