In the recent times, number of Institutes offering Higher Education is increasing at an exponential rate with the aim to increase the access to education to everyone, but mere access to education does not play its game as it may lead to several gaps and issues like quality, employability etc. In fact the relevance and excellence of academic programmes to empower individual to become a knowledgeable, skilled and responsible workforce on par with global standards has become the key concern of imparting Education.

Our present education system deficitstrained staffs, infrastructure, facilities, curriculum, assessment are not in accordance with the requirements of 21st century education competencies, which are more focused on the development of critical thinking, communication skills, research, problem solving skills etc.

“We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet.” Swami Vivekananda

Quality and Quality Assurance in Higher Education System:

The Higher Education is the back-bone of a Nation that produces human resources with life-long learning skills to face real-life challenges and develop the solutions favorable to him, society, nation and the world. Quality of higher education can be described as the revolutionary measures to bring social, technological and industrial development in the students. In this respect, Quality assurance is continuous responsibility of Higher Education Institutes to design and implement actions to maintain and improve the quality of Higher Education.
Accreditation of Higher Education Institutes:

Accreditation refers to the evaluation of program or Institute that has qualified or exceeded the standards which are established by expert team and proportionally reflects that the graduates of the Institute or program or department have attained the pre-set standards which are designed keeping the holistic development of students and all-round quality standards of Institution.Accreditation pushes the Institute or program for quality assurance to build public acceptability and Quality improvement for continuous working around the standards which is done by external audit or review procedures.
Need of Quality assurance and Accreditation:

· The movement to make education for all has led to tremendous growth of Higher Educational Institutes and diversification. Such huge diversification has made many institutions amend their ways of management and teaching-learning practices. These kind of initiatives are continuously required to be assessed to upgrade the quality of education.

· Globalization of education demands the transparency and accountability of procedures in an Institute. The quality standards are required to be met by the students of an institute for the seamless mobility across borders national that can be possible with the rigorous procedures of Quality assurance and Accreditation of HEIs.
The use of technology in education system has been promoted by our government since a long time. Many institutions have adopted such blend and modified their ways to perform operations. Such revolutionary changes call for the review for the quality assurance in HEIs so that the high quality education should not be compromised but should be enhanced to encourage the research culture in HEIs.

· Higher Education System has been fragmented to a high extent with the advent of different kinds of education avenues such as open universities, private universities, distance education and online programs. Such fragmentation and diversification need to be reviewed for validation of meeting the adequate standards.
Benefits of Accreditation:

Accreditation builds a certain level of trust and accountability in public towards the Quality assurance of the established standards of the program or institute. It reinforces the Institutes for constant excellence endeavors. Stakeholders and Society can reap the following benefits from the accredited Higher Educational Institutes.

For the Institutes:

· Accreditation demonstrates the Institute or Program meets the stringent quality standards reflected in the norms.
Institutes can perform SWOT analysis i.e. know their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities / threats which helps them to take decisions for improvement.

· It helps to adopt student-centric education model for skill-oriented learning.

· Accreditation pushes the Institutes to develop research and multidisciplinary culture for innovative and progressive knowledge.

· Institutes become self-governed with new directions and initiatives for quality assurance to build their identity.

· Funding agencies are more interested to provide funds for research or for other growth areas in accredited HEIs.
Society expects the solutions of their problem and empowerment from accreditedhigh-quality education institutes.

· Accreditation facilitates world-wide recognition of their degree or diploma that ensures internationalization of education.

· Institutes can foster continuous quality enhancement to accomplish the goals of individual. social and national transformation.

For the students:

· Prospective students and their parents can take well-informed decision for enrolment in accredited HEIs.

· The graduates from accredited HEIs get better employability opportunities as they are expected to demonstrate advanced knowledge and competencies.

· The students of accredited HEIs are supposed to acquaint with curriculum and standards at par with global perspectives that eases their prospects of international study.

Not only the Institutes and Students, but Faculty, Parents, Society and Nation also getbenefited from the accreditation status of HEIs as this status signifies the continuous quality improvement of teaching-learning practices and a high-quality education ecosystem to cater to the economical, technological and ethical needs of the country.

The path of accreditation generally constitutes of following stages:

· First the institute is required to restructure its goals or objectives.

· Next it is required to examine its own eligibility and accreditation mechanism of governing body.

· Following this, institute or program is required to undergone self-study in accordance with the regulations to get aware with the requirements and the gaps.

· Next an extensive mechanism for data collection and formatting is carried out in line with the requisites of accrediting body.

· Subsequently, the institute undergoes self-assessment and evaluation with flawless reports prior to requesting the governing body to visit and validate the data and reports.

· Finally, the regulatory body takes the final decision based on the self-assessment reports of Institute and recommendations.

HEIs can reap the benefits of getting accredited using iCloudEMS:

iCloudEMS is a pace-maker in offering advanced technology products to streamline the institutional management and providing unified solutions to the assorted needs of stakeholders. We deliver a comprehensive Accreditation management solution
that overcomes the administrative and non-administrative challenges related with data management and report generation faced through the groundwork of accreditation with its following attributes:

· Preparation work of most of accreditation bodies demands the data organization in the form of answers to specified questions related to established standards. Our cloud-based Accreditation management system allows to enter and govern data on a centralized portal as answers to predefined Question set on the digital platform and also provide utilities for kind perusal of data by concerned authorities.

· Self-assessment and evaluation stage of accreditation process involves the generation of multiple reports for analysis and results which necessitates the precise approach. Our system is equipped with the standard utilities and formula set to generate main reports and sub reports for multiple accreditations bodiesfor flawless accreditation assessments and qualification analysis.

· There is need to collect data of several years as a part of required data collection. Such bulk data uploading is a cumbersome process but the innovative features of our Accreditation management system
ease such bulk data uploading process by utilizing the facility to use the prefilled data and vast document repository of several years on portal.

· Our Expert Database Verification team is always available for the close analysis of the standards and assists the staff to fill the gaps if any during data and report management.

Quality assurance in higher education is an empowering mechanism to prepare youth with the vast knowledge and global competencies to contribute social and national progress. Thus, Quality which is a multi-layer and a subjective concept, should be the key concern of Higher Education System. To maintain and improve the quality of the system, India established accreditation bodies that follow rigorous procedures as a measure of Quality assurance. University Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have structured The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC)and The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) as external quality review agencies. There are some other accreditation bodies as well such as ABET, AACSB to accredit Higher Education on different quality aspects. These government bodies have established some norms and quality check parameters based on which, they give their decision regarding quality improvement and assurance of institute or program. Therefore, accreditation has become necessary for HEIs to assure the flow of quality and the Accreditation Management System of iCloudEMS
gets the groundwork simplified for HEIs by automating and restructuring the meticulous activities involved in the journey of accreditation.

Source from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-accredited-higher-education-inst...