Foundations of External Quality Assurance in Indian Higher Education

This publication is one of the first attempts to explore the nature, and implications of, and institutions and mechanisms for, Local Level Planning and Development with focus on people's effective participation in decision-making and equitable sharing of the benefits of development. The book, in short, is concerned with the practical and operational aspects of development planning. The book brings under one cover the papers and reports of two interlinked meetings organised by UNAPDI and ESCAP. These meetings were attended by eminent development scholars and practitioners from the developing countries and also from a few developed countries. The book is divided into two parts. The first part consists of conceptual papers and a synthetic report of the UNAPDI meeting. The background papers put forth innovative concepts of "labour certificates", "people's sector" and a new system of "employee performance appraisal." The second part of the book consists of the country studies, and the report of the ESCAP meeting. Both the reports have useful suggestions for further research and experimentation in local level planning and development. The two appendices included in the book give detailed reports on research projects undertaken both by UNAPDI and ESCAP in pursuance of the recommendations of the two expert consultative meetings. In view of the current world-wide interest in participatory planning and development at the local level, the book is timely. It should be of interest not only to policymakers and planners but also to general readers and students interested in both conceptual and operational aspects of integrated rural development.

About the Author :
Dr. Antony Stella is the Adviser of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). As one of the founding team of officers of NAAC, she has been a part of all its developmental activities for the past seven years. With a Ph.D. in educational technology, she has more than 75 papers and eight books - four on Assessment and Accreditation and the rest on education - to her credit. She has authored a Report for UNESCO about external quality assurance in India and co-edited two books on international perspectives and developments in quality assurance. She is the recipient of Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Research Award and Fulbright Post-doctoral Fellowship. She has visited many countries to share the country experience on quality assurance. As a Fulbright Scholar at the Center for Quality Assurance in International Education and the George Washington University, she has analysed the US experience of Quality Assurance in Higher Education. She has been consulted by many quality assurance agencies on various issues of quality assessment. She is a member of the International Reference Group of the Higher Education Quality Committee of South Africa. Prof. A Gnanam has been a leading Plant Molecular Biologist-Biotechnologist before turning to be an educational administrator in early eighties. As a Fulbright Scholar he completed his graduate studies in Biochemistry from the State University at Raleigh. He taught Plant Sciences at Cornell University before he returned to continue his research in India. He established the now well-known School of Biological Sciences and the Centre for Plant Molecular Biology at Madurai Kamaraj University. He is a fellow and its senior Vice-President of Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He turned to educational administration as the Vice-Chancellor of Bharathidasan, Madras and Pondicherry Universities successively. He became the Chairman of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council in India in 1995 and served as the Chairman of its Executive Committee till mid-2003. He is currently a member of the UNESCO Global Forum and the co-ordinator of the Asia-Pacific sub network of quality assurance agencies. He has published more than 30 articles and co-authored four books on higher education.