Great Place to Study Research Institute (GPTS-RI), an entity of higher education Think Tank and advisory firm – SkillTree Knowledge Consortium, hosted its 2nd Global League Institute Certification at the House of Commons in London, UK. GPTS-RI certifies and affiliates colleges based on student satisfaction survey, and on-ground audit. Founded by Shekhar ABhattacharjee & Arvina Purkayastha, the new assessment model for higher education institutions is going places. Autar Nehru spoke with Bhattacharjee, the CEO and Founder.
“We want to help institutions and universities across emerging nations to create quality education and sustain global standards as well as at the same time understand the importance of student engagement and happiness quotient”
Let’s begin by knowing about Global League Institute Certification that took place in London in December 2015?
GPTS Research Institute envisions to help institutions and universities to create quality education and sustain global standards. Through its auditing and certification services it helps universities since two years, a way of seeing their own weakness and depths. So, it was our second year and we held the GLI Certification Ceremony 2015 at the House of Commons at the historic Churchill Room in London and was hosted by Rt Hon. Virendra Sharma, Member of Parliament from Ealing Southall in British parliament. The gathering saw in attendance a distinguished guest list from the world of academia, politics, business and public service, all united to laud India’s educational prowess on the international stage including Baroness Verma, Lord Dholakia and host Rt. Hon. Virendra Sharma, MP. The 2015-16 GLI certifications was conferred to 14 Indian institutions.
Interesting. How is that you had to go all the way to London to award Indian institutions?
Great Place to Study Research Institute is an Indian origin global firm, creating presence in different countries and continent. From a strategic vision, hosting such ceremony in developed nation is not only important to us but more importantly idea is to position Indian higher education in global knowledge economy. London is one of the top global destination for higher education and India shares strong academic relations with the UK universities for decades, thus it helps our certified institutes to get global exposure, build relations and most importantly earn the accolade in prestigious venue in presence of who’s who of global education community.
What is this certification exactly?
Great Place to Study Certification is an emblem of global standard and practices earned by institutions & universities who have strong focus on student satisfaction practices in the area of learning experience, learning objective, learning outcome, life on campus and happiness quotient. The 5 levels of GLI certification was built by doing rigorous research, field study, understanding of internationalization &economy, best global practices and core focus on high level student engagement. The Final report after evaluation constitutes of 70% result from student satisfaction survey conducted and hosted online and 30% from on ground audit, which emphasis on infrastructure, life on campus, teaching methodology, global standards and brand equity.
How are you going global?
Great Place to Study Research Institutes’ review model has been highly appreciated by the global community and especially the Asian countries have shown interest to adopt our process & mechanism. We have opted the model of licensing out our business to individuals and organization outside India, who own the rights to operate in respective territory.
Can you explain how the survey is undertaken?
Student satisfaction survey is an online survey, where-in we try that 100% students from the participating institutes take the survey. The survey have 35 set of KPIs under broader category of Learning Experience, Extra Curricular, Infrastructure, Life on Campus and Happiness factor. Answers to KPIs are categorized from lowest vote of not-satisfied to extremely satisfied with value of 20 being the lowest and 100 being the highest. Total score generated in each area is further divided by the total number of students’ vote to come to conclusion on each KPIs result.
Rankings don’t engage students feedback and most of the time is based on reputation, teachers, international outlook, overall delivery and enrollment strategy. Where-as in our survey, the feedback is purely based on engagement, involvement, happiness factor and learning outcome. Great Place to Study don’t rank institutes but classifies strength and helps them to emerge to global standards through mentoring services. Top of everything ranking is healthy competition and is purely based on quantitative analysis. Ranking cannot define or judge output of learning. Most importantly, ranking in India is considered to be the first and last resort of selecting an institute. Students needs to be educated beyond ranking.
How can institutions desirous of participating in your surveys and other programs participate?
GPTS is an open platform and we welcome every institute to participate in our survey & audit process. More than being certified by us, an institute receives a detail insight on area of improvement, current strengths, changes required and overall global perceptive that an institute needs to adopt. On request, we help institutes to set goals & mission and work together with them to achieve the targets through our mentorship program. Our Review section is open to all institutes and this is the only platform that helps an institute to showcase real insight & transparent feedback of current students to the prospective students, parents & recruiters.
Future plans
We envision developing world’s largest community of global institutes, educate the society at large about the greatness factor of an institute, help institutes to understand the importance of student engagement and happiness quotient and lastly become the trusted information platform for students & parents for disseminating right information and insights of our reviewed, audited and certified institutes.
