The fundamental goal of any educational institution is to provide quality education & state-of-the-art facilities to students & help them build new skills that would help in shaping their careers. And the first step towards ensuring that institutions are working in synchronization with the primary goal is getting “Accreditation” from reputed agencies like NBA/NAAC, and others. Accreditation helps in protecting the interests of all the stakeholders – students, faculty, parents, and educators by mapping & evaluating the overall institutional performance on the basis of the programs offered.
Let us understand step by step what accreditation actually means, why it is important, and what benefits it has to offer…
What Is Accreditation?
Accreditation can be defined as a quality assurance process that helps educational institutions to attain their academic goals by meeting the guidelines & standards set by accreditation granting agencies such a National Assessment and accreditation councils (NAAC)/National Board of Accreditation (NBA) etc. Educational institutions have to undergo an extensive process that requires them to successfully pass the quality checks in terms of managing accurate institutional data, designing courses, carrying out assessments to evaluate & enhance students’ performance, provide top-class facilities, etc.
For instance, if an institution aims at getting NBA Accreditation, then it must meet the operational standards & guidelines set by the NBA. NBA committee members will review the programs, crucial institutional information, data & compliance reports of the institution and, if they find them satisfactory enough to match their standards, they will grant accreditation!
Importance Of Institutional Accreditation
Institutions have to go through a standard process to reach the end goal of getting accredited. Usually, the course accreditation process comprises the following steps:
- Peer Review
- Visit and Examination
- Final Decision
For the peer review process, institutions need to compile institutional data from the past few years & prepare and submit error-free compliance reports. Satisfactory reports lead to the next step where the institution qualifies for accreditation committee visit. The committee checks whether the parameters mentioned in the reports are met by verifying the necessary proofs and documents & then a decision to provide accreditation or not is made. So, the accreditation process empowers higher educational institutions by helping them to analyze their loopholes, improve their academic structure, work on it, and gain trust amongst individuals. It provides institutions an opportunity to design their education and head in the direction of continuous improvement. Therefore, accreditation is extremely important.
Benefits Of Institutional Accreditation For Higher Education
Accreditation can prominently help in achieving the following key parameters.
- Determining whether an institution is meeting standards of education
- Improving enrollment rate by winning trust of students & parents
- Helping employers to determine the programs credibility & knowledge level of students
- Enables graduates to appear for further certification examinations
- Accelerates the chances of placements in institutions
- Creates goals for self-improvement of educational institutions
Higher education accreditation management is not an easy process. It takes effort, time, and proper data management to pass the litmus test. And to be honest, it can multiply the workload of faculty members by 10 times and still the accuracy of reports will be a point of doubt due to manual data management.