KSHEC - State accreditation council mooted

From -http://www.thehindu.com

The Kerala State Higher Education Council (KSHEC) will recommend to the State government the setting up of a State Accreditation and Assessment Council to carry out a continuous and comprehensive assessment of the quality of teachers and educational institutions in the State.

The SAAC will be modelled on the National Accreditation and Assessment Council (NAAC) of the University Grants Commission, and would help the council decide where to direct its financial assistance, KSHEC Vice-Chairman T.P. Sreenivasan said here on Thursday.

He was briefing reporters on the decisions taken at the first meeting of the KSHEC's executive council, which concluded here on Thursday.

The council would fashion a mechanism to put in place and/or strengthen interactions between the industry and institutions of higher learning. Such a system would be able to understand what the industry needed and to change curricula in educational institutions accordingly.

The council would also ready schemes designed to attract investment in higher education from business houses.

The council did not intend to repeal or drastically alter the choice-based credit-and-semester system for degree courses. All the same a robust review of the scheme's implementation across the State would be done. A committee of Pro Vice-Chancellors had been set up to review the scheme, and course corrections would be done wherever necessary.

CLUSTER OF COLLEGES

There are shortcomings in the roll out of the cluster of colleges scheme. Cluster-related programmes were not being implemented properly in many places. Efforts would be made to remove the apprehensions of private colleges in joining the clusters. Only after the functioning of existing clusters was optimised would new ones be sanctioned, Mr. Sreenivasan said.

The beneficiary list for this year's higher education scholarships would be ready in two months. Though there is a demand for bringing professional courses under the ambit of the scholarship scheme, the Council had resolved to ask the government for separate funds for the purpose. The council would recommend to the government that some scholarships be reserved for students from the OBC category.

IIT FOR STATE

The council has passed a resolution calling for establishing an IIT in the State. It would also recommend to the government the setting up of an open university and a Malayalam university.

The student and teacher-exchange initiatives of the previous council would be strengthened. The government would be urged to set up a Centre of Excellence for training teachers. The council would recommend to the government to implement in full the UGC scheme.

Given that a large number of seats in professional colleges—engineering colleges mainly—are lying vacant, it would be a good idea to package Kerala's professional education to students from outside the State, he said.

The recommendations would now be placed before the KSHEC governing council.