The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) ruled on Saturday that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the nation will now be classified as either “accredited” or “not accredited,” replacing the previous accreditation system that assigned grades to HEIs.
The NAAC also resolved to encourage accredited institutions to reach the highest level by assigning them additional levels between one and five during a meeting of the executive council on Saturday.
The binary accreditation system (accredited or not accredited) will be put into place in the next four months, followed by the maturity-based graded accreditation (levels 1 through 5) by December. These reforms will be implemented in two phases.
According to a senior Ministry of Education (MoE) official, “there will be Binary Accreditation (either accredited or not accredited) rather than grades to encourage all the institutions to get on-board in the accreditation process thereby creating a quality culture in the higher education system.”
