Vinay P Sahasrabuddhe, a BJP leader and a member of the Rajya Sabha, who is also the head of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on education, women, children, youth and sports, reviewed a report on the education standards and accreditation process. The higher education department of the Union ministry informed the committee that only 30% of the universities and 20% of colleges come under the purview of the accreditation system.
The report further mentioned that “Thus, there is a long way to go as out of 50,000 colleges, there are less than 9,000 [that] are accredited. Accreditation is a procedure wherein standardisation happens as to what minimum benchmarks are to be created. Thus, till a large body of colleges are going towards an accreditation process, the realisation of quality in this entire sphere will be hard to achieve as it is not mandatory at present.” This quote was cited from a deposition that given by the secretary of education.
The panel was deeply concerned and said “more efforts to offer incentives to bring institutions under accreditation system is the need of the hour.” As the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 also places a lot of emphasis on accreditation, measures to amend the gap must also be taken.
