29 Colleges of BRABU may abandon from UGC funds

On the grounds of not initiating the process of acquiring the accreditation form National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), 29 out of the 39 constituent colleges under  BR Ambedkar Bihar University (BRABU) are about to lose their financial assistance worth of crore of rupees from the University Grants Commission (UGC). The UGC provides heavy financial assistance to these institutions every year under Rashtriya Uchchattar Shiksha Abhiyan and is going to stop the same for the 29 colleges under BRBU from the month of April, next year.

Among all the colleges under BRBU, only RDS College and MDDM College at Muzaffarpur and MS College at Motihari have got their NAAC accreditation done. Though the marks obtained by these colleges are not that significant as MDDM College has scored 2.84, RDS College 2.65 and MS College 2.04, all getting the Category ‘B’, according to which their financial assistance from the UGC gets decided.  Currently the peer committee of NAAC is visiting various colleges and evaluating their status for the accreditation. The final phase of the accreditation when the evaluation would be complete is scheduled to take another six months from now.

Colleges willing to apply for their NAAC accreditation need to do it in threefold. Initially they need to issue a letter of intent to the authorities of NAAC, in order to make sure that they want the accreditation from the body. After the intent letter, there has to be self-assessment report by the colleges and if they get eligible for quality assessment they would get considered to get accredited. The peer committee of NAAC would then visit the colleges concerned and prepare their report according to their findings.

The NAAC would look into the strength of faculty members, teacher’s learning status, the various facilities that the students are getting in the campus, the status of laboratories and libraries and other facilities to rate the colleges. Presently most of the colleges are running short of teachers and there is hardly one teacher available in some departments at some colleges. The problem has arisen due to the fact that the recruitment of permanent teachers doesn’t fall under the purview of university and that state has not appointed any teacher for years.