Although several newspapers and magazines publish league tables ranking colleges and universities, these are general news publications with peripheral interest in education. Therefore the annual EWIHER, first introduced in 2013, are the best and most reliable rankings available to parents and school-leaving students, writes Dilip Thakore Grading and ranking higher education institutions has come under a cloud with the dramatic resignation of Bhushan Patwardhan last month from the position of executive committee chairperson of NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council, estb.1994), the highest government agency for rating and ranking undergrad colleges and universities in India. According to Patwardhan, favourable grades are available to higher education institutions (HEIs) for a price. “Based on my experience, various complaints from the stakeholders, and review committee reports, I had expressed my apprehensions earlier about the possibility of vested interests, malpractices, and nexus among the persons concerned, offering thereby a green corridor by presumably manipulating… processes leading to the awarding of questionable grades to some HEIs. Mainly due to this, I had also suggested the need for an independent inquiry by appropriate high-level national agencies,” he wrote to UGC chairman Jagadesh Kumar on February 26. This letter calling for an independent inquiry was “misinterpreted” by Jagadesh Kumar as a letter of resignation, and old academic warhorse Anil Sahasrabudhe was appointed chairman of NAAC on March 3. On March 5, Patwardhan formally resigned from his position after making a sincere appeal to the Central government to “institute an independent inquiry in this regard and book those who are responsible for this serious lapse on their part, in the interest of justice to protect my individual rights, dignity, and sanctity of UGC, NAAC, and Higher Educational Institutions in the country.” This somewhat over-detailed recitation of a top-level resignation at NAAC is likely to evoke wry smiles within knowledgeable monitors of Indian higher education. Because it’s been known for years if not decades, that good NAAC grades could be obtained for consideration. Visiting NAAC assembled task forces comprising retired vice chancellors and senior academics — whose costs of inspection are paid by the assessee institution — are routinely wined, dined and more by the assessee HEIs for high grades. Ditto teams from AICTE and UGC. Indeed as emphasised by your editors in several critiques of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 which mandates establishment of a plethora of official committees to supervise higher education — HECI, NAC, NHER, HEGC and GEC — while at the same time mandating institutional autonomy, there is an inherent contradiction in NEP 2020 which may prove a fatal flaw of the policy. With the education establishment and bureaucracy thoroughly compromised, finding individuals of “unimpeachable integrity” to man these committees and commissions mandated by the Kasturirangan Committee Report on which NEP 2020 is based, sounds like mission impossible. Most likely, positions in these high-sounding committees and commissions will be filled by ruling party faithfuls put out to pasture and not immune to well-phrased inducements. Be that as it may, it’s highly unlikely that parents/school-leavers…
