NBA accreditation to ensure quality technical education

Updated on: Friday, August 17, 2012

With only 20%, of the technical colleges having obtained minimum quality assured certification from authorized issuing authority, technical education is certain to take the back seat in the state, reveals Prof. Moorthy Selvakumaran, Education consultant 

In the current scenario, students and parents find it difficult to select through the 535 colleges and 54 odd branches that would set off to a illustrious career.

To ease the students selection process, quality certification like Accreditation by National Board of Accreditation (NBA), New Delhi is a healthier solution. However, only few institutions, less than around 20% have this minimum quality assured certification.

Prof Moorthy Selvakumaran says, during the 11th five year plan, NBA was part of All India Council for Technical Education for providing quality certificate to the better performing Engineering colleges and branches.

Later, the government of India decided to provide autonomy for NBA as a separate body to provide quality in technical institutions as scores of engineering colleges in the country is producing over 18 lakh engineers every year.

Thereby, now, NBA has become a separate statuary body to assess and to accredit the technical programs under Washington Accord, which is internationally, accepted accrediting process. The countries like UK, USA, and Germany etc are the permanent members of such a forum.

He further added that apart from benefitting students, it benefits institutions to avail various funds from central agencies like MHRD, UGC, DIT, DST & AICTE.

Recently, the NBA, modified its feedback process under Washington accord, the educational system is linked with 360-degree feedback from various stakeholders like students, parents, industry, alumni and professional bodies like AIEEE, ISTE & IET.

Today, poor performing Engineering colleges is the main reason for the increasing unfilled engineering seats in Tamil Nadu, providing an opportunity for students to take second decision to opt for arts degree or some other career options.

Most of the self-financing Engineering colleges are only focusing to attract students for filling their seats through advertisement, but less interested to improve their quality through a proper educational system.

To obtain NBA accreditation, a six-year-old engineering branch is eligible to apply. But there seems to be no sign of colleges showing interest in developing quality - even 15-year-old engineering colleges.

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