Chapter introduction Preamble

Chapter

8

Accreditation

1. 
   Accreditation of Technical Education Programmes
   

The New Education Policy of 1986 had recognized the need for a statutory body at the national level responsible for over seeing the growth and quality of technical education in the country. Accordingly, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) was established by an Act of Parliament in 1987. As a part of its programme and activities, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) was set up by the AICTE in September 1994, in order to assess the qualitative competence of educational institutions from the Diploma level to the Post-Graduate level in Engineering and Technology, Management including Hotel Management, Pharmacy, Architecture, Town Planning, Applied Arts and Crafts and related disciplines. NBA is also concerned with assessing and assuring the quality of the various constituent elements of these educational institutions, such as academic ambience, infrastructure, financial, physical & human resources, supporting systems like library resources, computational resources, and avenues to mould and develop student’s personality and learning characteristics.
Accreditation is a process of quality assurance, whereby a programme in an AICTE approved institution is critically appraised at intervals not exceeding six years to verify that the institution or the programme meets the Norms and Standards prescribed by the NBA from time to time. Accreditation does not seek to replace the system of award of Degrees and Diplomas by the Universities and Boards of Technical Education. But, accreditation provides quality assurance that the academic aims and objectives of the institution are known to be honestly pursued and effectively achieved by the resources currently available, and that the institution has demonstrated capabilities to ensure effectiveness of the educational programme(s), over the validity period of accreditation. The NBA, presently, accredits Post Graduate/Degree/Diploma level programmes offered by an institution rather than the institution itself. A programme securing a score between 650-750 points on a thousand point scale is accredited for a period of 3 years whilst those achieving a score in excess of 750 are accredited for a period of 5 years. Programmes securing less than 650 points are Not Accredited. This is especially important for promoting a healthy competition for quality achievement among the different Degree/Diploma programmes of the same institution, as well as among similar programmes in different institutions. Thus, in a given institution, some programmes may be accredited for five years, while some other may be accredited for three years and some even denied accreditation. Till date (March 31, 2008), total number of 2649 programmes are accredited from 727 institutions. During 2007-2008 NBA has completed the accreditation process for 608 programmes from 156 institutions in various disciplines. In this scheduled period, the three meetings of National Board of Accreditation were held i.e. 40^th NBA Meeting on May 04, 2007, 41^st NBA meeting on September 12, 2007 and 42^nd NBA Meeting on January 22, 2008.

State-wise list of accredited programmes of technical Institutions during 2007-2008 and the functions of NBA are given in Appendix 8.1 and 8.2 respectively.