The Vice President of India, M. Venkaiah Naidu has stressed the importance of achieving the goals of access, equity and excellence in higher education.Speaking after releasing the book titled “Quality, Accreditation and Ranking – A Silent Revolution in the Offing in Indian Higher Education” written by Dr. H Chaturvedi and his fellow authors, here today, he said the focus of successive governments for the past many years has been to achieve “access, equity and excellence”. Although substantial progress has been made over the years, a lot more needs to be done, particularly on the excellence front, he added.Pointing out that quality assurance was important to improve higher education sector, he said the root cause of the problem in private and government-funded institutions was commercialization and poor governance respectively. The true quality of education should be assessed by its ability to foster responsible citizenship and social cohesiveness, and inculcate moral and ethical values in students. This important aspect of quality education goes beyond the contours of the course curriculum and the actual teaching–learning processes that take place inside the classroom, he added.Shri Naidu said that higher education transforms an individual into a responsible human being with social, moral and ethical values embedded in him or her apart from making the person more productive.
Thus, quality assurance and accreditation mechanism should acknowledge the transformative role of education in a broader sense, he added.The Vice President said that quality assurance mechanism helps the students to choose courses and institutions on the basis of grades or ranks. It would enable them to make informed choice. From the perspective of the institutions, accreditation and ranking would help them to identify gaps in their delivery mechanism, the Vice President said.Quoting the UNESCO Institute of Statistics data, Shri Naidu said that there were only 215 researchers per million inhabitants in India as on 2015 and women researchers participation was minimal. “We cannot continue with business as usual approach and there should be a paradigm shift in promoting research in higher educational institutions”, he added.The Vice President urged HEIs to accord greater importance to research and innovation and promote an eco-system for creativity to thrive. He said that having a research facility at Post Graduate College level should become a criterion for obtaining accreditation by bodies such as UGC (University Grants Commission) or NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council).The Book released by the Vice President contains articles, essays and research papers authored by some of the prominent educationists, policy makers, researchers and a media person, presents an analysis of the past and present scenario in the Indian Higher Education. The book also focuses on how to raise the quality of our colleges and universities to enable them compete globally.