Recently, we were accredited by National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), and we received an 'A' grade.
This is remarkable for a number of reasons. The state of Rajasthan has a large number of universities, both in private sector and in public sector, and also several deemed-to-be-universities. Only two universities have a grade which is higher than 'A'. Second, it is rare (perhaps never happened but we don't know for sure) that a university of our size gets an 'A' grade in NAAC accreditation in the very first round.
The university decided in 2019 that we will go for NAAC accreditation. We then realized that the amount of documentation that is needed is too large and it will take time for us to do everything required to get accreditation. Indeed, it takes time to just understand the process in the first instance. And the self study report (SSR) that you submit covers five academic years. So we had a target that we will include years up to 2019-20 in the SSR and plan to submit it soon after June, 2020. But then Covid happened and we could submit the report only in June, 2021. There were some queries that we answered. Then they fixed a date for the visit, but we had a few Covid cases on the campus and the visit had to be postponed. Then we fixed another date and basically it got delayed to April, 2022.
Now the issue with us was that the university had undertaken a massive overhaul in 2017-18 and since then there is a much sharper focus on quality in everything we do. Just to give an example, we have increased the minimum qualification for some programs from 45% to 70%. Despite sharply increasing the minimum qualifications, our admissions are increasing by 20-30% every year. Our research papers are more, the average and median CTC in our student placements is more than double of that time (in fact, our median CTC in BTech is higher than most top colleges you would have in your list), and in every parameter that NAAC looks at, we are far better today than where we were 5-6 years ago. In most cases, the faculty is from top institutions in India. The student body represents the whole of India while earlier most of the students were from Jaipur and nearby.
So if we were to get a grade based on the average of 2015-20 performance, the five years for which the report was submitted, we would have missed an 'A' grade. But thankfully, their process includes a visit by the team and the team is seeing on the ground what we are in 2022 and not what we were in 2015-20. We had a team consisting of five professors from different parts of the country, including North-East, Kashmir, Tamilnadu and Maharashtra. And let me admit that we were lucky to have such a team. They went through hundreds of files but they also went through all the buildings, labs, facilities, talked to random students, employees and faculty (besides formal meetings). And were they impressed. In their exit meeting on the last day of the visit, the summary had almost exclusively praises for a variety of innovative stuff we do, including our Olin inspired style of Project Based Learning. They were impressed with the flexibility that our curriculum had and which allowed our students to spend a semester in another fine institution in India and abroad, and indeed more than 10% of our students do this every year, going to places like IIT Gandhinagar, IIIT Delhi, University of Florida and so on.
They very specifically mentioned about our faculty and staff recruitment process which had resulted in the most diverse set of staff members they had seen. They actually asked for numbers based on gender, caste, religion, state to which they belong, and so on. It took us some time to look at every file but when the final numbers came we were ourselves pleasantly surprised by the diversity that we have been able to achieve in our recruitment. In our recruitment process, we make sure that the interviewers would not have such personal information at the time of interview and we keep reminding our senior people that we ought to have a diverse set of employees (and students).
There were other little things that impressed them. Like our Covid policy. Unlike many institutions who putout full page ads saying that they will waive fees of students if the person paying their fees (father usually) dies of Covid and then didn't waive fees since it was impossible to get a death certificate specifying Covid as the cause, we thought we should not benefit from Covid, did not take out any ad but quietly implemented the policy without even seeking a proof of Covid death. And we are perhaps the only university where we are supporting the family of an employee who died out of Covid.
Their recommendations for future were mainly to increase admissions and reduce our dependency on philanthropic funds from one source (JK Organization). They said that the benefit of our quality education should be accessible to a greater set of students and we should open our doors wider. Second, we should become more self-reliant and try to get funds from more industries, trusts, alumni, etc. Perhaps they wanted to say that our fees are too low for the kind of things we are doing but if we want to keep the fees low, we should find alternate sources of funds.
The whole journey wasn't easy. Many of our peers who are better known and have better resources did not get accredited in the first instance or got accredited without an 'A' grade. It is not surprising since the process is really tough to even understand and it requires a huge team effort which is often under-estimated the first time. In our case, Prof. Sanjay Goel, was overall incharge of this project and he made sure that everyone on campus has a role to play.
And we are seeing what a change such an external recognition can bring. For the last one year in JKLU, my message to all students, faculty and staff has always been that the only thing we need to focus on is the culture of excellence and have the confidence of achieving excellence in whatever we do. While things have been improving, but this accreditation has made everyone more confident than ever before that we belong to the list of top quality universities in India and everyone is united in their determination to get there quickly.
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