Accreditation of Indian LIS Degree and the Role of Academic Leaders and Professional Associations.

[Dr. Naved Ahmad]

Greetings!

I am a proud alumnus of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), earned a number of degrees including PhD and certificates and representing my alma-mater with a distinguished persona, knowledge and professional skills that my Alma-mater taught which I knew not. I am indebted for!

I don’t have any personal feeling of resentment with any human beings in the Universe. With the principles of teaching and learning, an individual become rational, hence, for many causes one must be rationalized and have right to show dissents in all spheres of life; that is called the ideological differences.

Because of spending a few years in Gulf, I closely looked into International Market, hence, realized the value of Indian degrees of Library & Information Science and felt the importance of its accreditation with American Library Association, Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Australian Library and Information Association, Library and Information Association of New Zealand Aotearoa (LIANZA) and other International accreditation bodies, to have an International scope and recognition of our LIS degrees.

Naturally, I must have rights to question these lacuna with the academic leaders especially from the Department of Library and Information Science, A.M.U Aligarh, from where I earned my degrees of Library and Information Science.

I feel fortunate enough to know that the Indian Library Association got its President for three years from my alma-mater to deal with and resolve the issues faced by the budding Library Professionals of India. Therefore, we, the library professionals are looking at Department of Library and Information Science, A.M.U Aligarh and Indian Library Association, with a beacon of hope, for their joint initiative to boast themselves to achieve and sign a Memorandum of Understanding with the international accreditation bodies.

To remind you all, the Government of Utter Pradesh has contemplated and in full swing to eat out the jobs meant for LIS professionals and fill these with the Physical Education Teachers, published in many Hindi daily couple of weeks ago, shows the apathy and ignorance of Indian Library Associations! I would like to request that the Indian Library Association must take this blazing issue into account and take initiatives and intervene immediately.

As a responsible library professional, I will raise the issue of International accreditation and recognition of Indian LIS degrees with the Hon’ble Minister of Human Resource Development Smriti Zubin Irani and, particularly, with the Department of Higher Education, very soon.

 

 

with warm regards

Dr. Naved Ahmad

navedahmad.com

[DR MONAWWER EQBAL]

Yes I am fully agree with your view regarding the issue of International accreditation and recognition of Indian LIS degrees

[Siddhartha Shankar Ray]

Dear Dr. Ahmed,

Thanks for your post and for addressing a very relevant issue.  I presume your Gulf exposure might have propelled you to write the post.

Nearly three decades ago, I too had realized this during my brief stints in Far Eastern & Western Countries. Actually, the accreditation in our profession is extremely necessary for three things:

(1) The ever shrinking market because a large number of pass-outs are educated from distance modes of educations.

(2) Lack of Transparency in recruitment processes &

(3) Improper jobs to deserving professionals

However, as I understand, the course curriculums of our Universities. as well as medium of instructions need to be evaluated first before aspiring for accreditation by foreign Universities. 

I am sure that Indian Universities as a whole will (& should) never be considered for accreditation by any Universities of the Countries you have named because there exist unevenness in quality of pedagogy and evaluating systems among Indian Universities.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray

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