Thursday, July 15, 2010
State will be first in country to have such an agency to audit colleges

Chennai: A state-level accreditation council which will promote academic audit and accreditation of all arts and science colleges in Tamil Nadu will begin functioning later this month.

Well-known academic and former University of Madras vice-chancellor S P Thyagarajan, who has rich experience in the domain of accreditation, will be the honorary chairman of the Tamil Nadu Accreditation Council. With the establishment of the accreditation council, it will become mandatory for all the arts and science colleges in the state to subject themselves to accreditation process and set up internal quality assurance cells, compared to the National Assessment and Accreditation been convened in the city on July 21 to brief them on the accreditation process at the state level.

“The accreditation council will ensure that all the colleges, after being accredited, establish internal quality assurance cells so that there is quality sustenance and enhancement in our higher education system. Tamil Nadu will be the first in the country to have such a state-level accreditation agency,” professor Thyagarajan told The Times of India on Wednesday.

With the Union human resource development ministry recently piloting the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill in Parliament, soon a National Accreditation Regulatory Authority (NCRA) would be in Council’s (NAAC) voluntary accreditation exercise that is in vogue.

A meeting of principals of arts and science colleges has place.

The NCRA would approve, register and regulate competent and reliable professional accrediting agencies across the country to undertake accreditation of thousands of higher educational institutions.

“The Tamil Nadu Accreditation Council would eventually adopt tailor-made guidelines to accredit our colleges based on the national level framework for accreditation to be set by the proposed National Accreditation Regulatory Authority. Right now we are undertaking a pilot activity,” he said.

In practical terms, accreditation granted by the state-level accreditation agency would give a stamp of legitimacy to the colleges concerned.

The accreditation would mean that students would get their money’s worth in an institution and it could also serve as protection against fraud and abuse of the institution.

According to Thyagarajan, under the accreditation regime all arts and science colleges would be subjected to an academic audit once in two years and re-accredited once every in five years.

“Quality is not a one-time activity. The biennial academic audit will serve as an interim assessment of the academic performance of an institution just like a financial audit is undertaken in a company to assess its financial health,” he said.

“The audit will establish if the institution deserves to retain its certification,” Thyagarajan explained.