New guidelines for accreditation for technical courses

The basics will no longer be enough for a technical college. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) has prepared a draft for accreditation that will look at the final outcome of a programme before rating it.

The basics will no longer be enough for a technical college. The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) has prepared a draft for accreditation that will look at the final outcome of a programme before rating it.

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“The quality of teachers, their experience, their interpersonal skills, the academic leadership they can provide will all matter. Not just the number of papers and publications will be looked at, but also the outcome of the work — whether it is adding value,” said B C Mazumdar, NBA chairman.

The NBA was recently became an autonomous body. It is no longer under the All India Council of Technical Education. While accrediting programmes will still be voluntary, the new team has designed a new set of process. The preliminary draft was presented at Powai’s NITIE, a management institute, to various academic stakeholders in Western India.

This is the first time that the NBA has drawn up different parameters for management courses. It earlier used a common scale for engineering and other technical programmes.

The draft will be discussed with people form the industry too.

Colleges are supposed to prepare a self assessment report and apply for accreditation, an expert committee will visit the institute and send its observations to the NBA; the executive council will finally decide whether to accredit the course or not.

Institutes have an option of filing an appeal against the NBA’s word. “If a course gets 60%, it will be accredited for two years; if it scores above 75%, it will be accredited for five years,’’ added Mazumdar.