‘Visva-Bharati lagging in research work, quality assessment’

Accreditation Council also not happy with performance of university’s Internal Quality Assessment Committee

The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) team visiting Visva-Bharati for evaluating the quality of its education is said to be unhappy with several things at the Rabindranath Tagore-founded university, finding it lagging in research work and quality assessment.

The NAAC assesses and accredits higher education institutions every five years. During the previous assessment, in 2015, the Santiniketan-based Visva-Bharati had scored 2.82 on the four-point scale, thus missing an ‘A’ by 0.18 points. A good score is important for an institution to get projects and grants.

“To begin with, the team was irritated that hardly 30-35 teachers were present during its scheduled interaction with faculty members yesterday [Thursday] evening,” a senior faculty member present at the meeting told The Hindu on Friday. “This, when the university has nearly 500 teachers. When the reason for the poor attendance was attributed to the pandemic, the team pointed out that the hall was big enough to accommodate far more people.”