Per week earlier than the possible groom’s household had been to go to my uncle’s home to discover a match together with his daughter, the preparations had began. The surface and the drawing room had been rapidly whitewashed, the furnishings cleaned and polished, the flower pots within the backyard received a recent coat of geru (purple ochre powder) and the crockery for the excessive tea was cleaned a number of occasions.
The perfect half although was the behaviour of my uncle in entrance of the groom’s household. He, who had a popularity within the household for being extraordinarily stern and tyrannical, was uncharacteristically obsequious and servile. As a teen, I discovered the entire thing fairly amusing.
I used to be reminded of this episode lately in the course of the go to of the NAAC staff to our college. NAAC, for the uninitiated, is the Nationwide Evaluation & Accreditation Council, whose mandate is to make “high quality assurance an integral a part of the functioning of Increased Training Establishments”. The method includes the establishment gathering enormous quantities of knowledge, making ready a voluminous report back to undergo the Council. A staff of evaluators then visits the establishment to make a first-hand evaluation of the standard.
Until lately, the Council used to grade establishments on a letter-grade system. This method was notoriously amenable to gaming by unscrupulous parts inside the tutorial ecosystem. There have been allegations of systemic irregularities and corruption, one thing identified by the Comptroller and Auditor Normal in addition to an erstwhile CEO of the organisation in his resignation letter. This scandal resulted within the adoption of a two-tier gradation. Within the first tier, a binary system of accredited and non-accredited could be given. Within the second tier, accredited establishments might go for a Maturity-Primarily based Grade Accreditation, which might be on a five-point scale. How this will probably be totally different from the sooner letter-grade system has not been made clear.
It’s, after all, laborious to argue with the will to enhance high quality in any organisation, whether or not an car manufacturing unit or a college. For universities, particularly these funded by the State, it’s also necessary that the sources are prudently managed. Nonetheless, it appears self-evident that the standard would imply various things for an car plant than it could be for a college just because the 2 serve very totally different functions. This, after all, would indicate that the benchmarks and methodology used for measurement in an instructional establishment should be totally different in different forms of organisations.
Sadly, this elementary reality appears to have escaped the eye of the boffins within the College Grants Fee (UGC). For them, tutorial high quality is to be measured by information — information on every little thing from pupil enrollment, pupil placement, analysis and educating by the college, information which is painstakingly collected by the college after which equipped in quite a few spreadsheets, pie charts and shows. The mandarins appear to be obsessive about the company high quality management maxim: What can’t be measured doesn’t exist.
Quite a few research have proven that high quality in an instructional establishment can’t be measured solely by numbers. Information may be of use, although quantitative information lends an aura of spurious precision and accuracy which can be misleading. Metrics of every kind might help provided that they don’t change judgement which relies on expertise. Relying solely on metrics as an alternative of a holistic evaluation signifies two issues: First, an inherent distrust of academicians which appears to prevail amongst training directors and secondly, a singular obsession with the rating tables which has gripped our academic paperwork of late.
The preparations in our establishment began weeks earlier than the anticipated go to by the NAAC staff. Departments had been requested for every kind of knowledge, which many professors spent hours gathering; buildings which had not been whitewashed for years received a brand new look; signboards had been put up everywhere in the college; junk furnishings and devices that had not been moved for years had been moved to a web site the place the NAAC staff wouldn’t be taken. Very like the sharpening of furnishings in my uncle’s home, issues which must be a part of routine upkeep and functioning had been now being accomplished for the aim of impressing the staff.
The need to please took on farcical proportions. Per week earlier than the precise go to, the college despatched out an order banning all automobiles contained in the campus. The connection between a campus bereft of automobiles and the standard of educating and analysis within the college stays mysterious.
The go to of the possible groom’s household to my uncle’s home was fruitful and so they agreed to the match. Whether or not it was the standard of the polish on the furnishings or the truth that his daughter was exceptionally gifted that impressed the groom won’t ever be recognized. The college directors would possibly equally be hoping for a constructive consequence from the NAAC staff’s go to.
Shobhit Mahajan teaches physics at Delhi College. The views expressed are private
