BDU staff may forego vacation in pursuit of NAAC rating

The teaching and non-teaching staff of Bharathidasan University are likely to forego their summer vacation for improving the institution's rating by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).

The university was re-accredited with ‘A’ grade by the NAAC in the previous cycle during 2013. It got a CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average) score of 3.16 on a four-point scale based on a set of seven parameters: curriculum, teaching-learning and evaluation, research consultancy and extension, infrastructure and learning resources, student activities, governance, and innovative practices.

‘A’ denotes very good, ‘B’ good, ‘C’ satisfactory and ‘D’ unsatisfactory.

This time around, the university has set its sights on A++ ranking. It means the university's CGPA must be above 3.76 on a four-point scale, with the parameters remaining the same.

The financial corpus available with the university will last only for a year and, hence, there is collective consciousness among both teaching and non-teaching staff that the institution has to take a quantum leap in strengthening quality.

As per the latest decision of the Ministry of Human Resource Development, only universities with top ranking from NAAC are eligible to offer distance education programmes, which have been the major source of revenue for BDU.

The main challenge facing the university is generation of data pertaining to the last four or five years. For the next one month, full-fledged documentation of academic and other related activities carried out by the university departments will be generated, a senior professor said.

In a circular dated April 23, issued to all heads of departments, G. Gopinath, Registrar, said NAAC registration and submission process would be open by May-June and that the university had to submit a flawless SSR “as our target for this time is A++.”

It was unanimously decided at a meeting of heads of departments last week that all faculty members in all the departments/centres/schools should be available in their departments till May 31 to accomplish the task of NAAC activities.

The circular further required all permanent faculty members from both vacation and non-vacation departments to be available in their respective departments during the whole month of May.

It requested them not to avail any type of leave during the month.

Source