Arunachal Pradesh faces quality challenges in higher education: Education minister Honchun Ngandam

| 28 Nov 2018 5:10 AM GMT

Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh Education minister Honchun Ngandam Monday admitted that the state is facing quality challenges in higher education in general, and technical and management education in particular.

Addressing vice-chancellors of private universities, college principals, and others, during the inaugural session of a daylong workshop on, ‘Best Practices in Higher Education Institutions for quality management in Arunachal Pradesh’ at a city-based hotel here, Ngandam called for reforms to ensure fundamental changes at all levels of operation.

He said the fundamental changes require greater accountability, transparency, and morality (ATM), more important than ATMs of any bank.

“Time has come to create a wave of institutional building and of excellence in the fields of higher education, research, and capability with enhanced capacities,” he said.

The minister said that the challenge of quality education with globalization as an opportunity calls for change in the mindset of all the stakeholders.

Higher Education institutions (HEIs) should foster their link with their community at the local, national and regional levels, to answer society’s needs, Ngandam said.

Saying that quality cannot be imparted, Ngandam said that quality should be by design. He said a quality product should be coming out of a robust system and there should be no compromise.

The minister said there should be continuous improvement in quality. Quality in technical education is an indication of the quality of society and country and its economic growth and the quality should be imparted in all aspects of a technical institute. He called for a holistic approach to design the quality of an academic organization.

Terming the workshop as important, Bangalore-based National Assessment & Accreditation Council (NAAC) advisor Dr M S Shyamasundar said that NAAC reviews the institutional quality procedures on a regular basis in order to safeguard the quality of HEIs.

Besides qualitative and quantitative evaluation, and extensive use of data, student satisfaction survey is also done while granting accreditation.

Seeking proactive effort from all, he sought cooperation from all to improve the standard of education in the state.

Stating that the state has quantity (56 HEIs for a population of over 13.5 lakhs), Education secretary, Dr Madhu Rani Teotia said we must ensure quality in these institutions. Out of the 56 higher education institutions in the state, only one university and seven colleges have been accredited by the NAAC.