The administration of DAV, PG College here has pulled up its socks for the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) certification for the college. The University Grants Commission (UGC) in its new guideline has made it mandatory for every college to have the NAAC certification.
The biggest and one of the oldest colleges of the State started preparation for NAAC certification after the Principal of the college Dr Devendra Bhasin reassumed the charge of the college recently after a long gap.
Shortly after taking charge, Bhasin set up a committee for NAAC certification. The committee is chaired by Head of Department (HOD) of History, V K Dikshit and has seven sub committees to look after as many criteria for certification.
The college got its last certification in the year 2005 when the NAAC provided it with B+ grade. This tenure of this certification ended in the year 2010 and after that the college authorities could not muster courage to call NACC team to the college reeling under staff shortage, crumbling infrastructure and crowded college campus.
The head of committee on NACC, Dikshit told The Pioneer that committee’s immediate objective is to prepare a Self Study Report (SSR) which would be uploaded on the website of the college soon.
He said that sub committees are sending their individual reports and based on them SSR would be prepared probably till the end of October month. Dikshit further informed that after preparing SSR, the college would send a letter of Intent (lOI) to the NAAC for its visit.
The absence of NAAC certification is hurting the college financially and is acting as impediment to the reputation of the college. The UGC in its recent guidelines has imposed a ban on grant to the colleges having no NAAC grade.
The college authorities are hoping that if everything goes under the plan then it is possible that the NAAC team could visit the college before next academic session.
“This time we are confident of a good NAAC score as a new block with 18 rooms is recently constructed in the college. Further the college now has less than 13000 students much less than 35000-37000 we used to have earlier. The admission system is transparent and merit based and with a little effort the college could get a desirable score,’’ said one of a staff members.
The NAAC is an autonomous body set up by the UGC of India to assess and accredit institutions of higher education in the country. The NAAC with its headquarters at Bangalore is mandated for periodic assessment of institutes of higher education so that an environment for teaching and research is created.