AICTE pushes for global standards

“From August, engineering and various technical programmes will be evaluated on the basis of a different set of criteria,” acting AICTE chairman, S S Mantha, told Deccan Herald. As per the new criteria, technical courses will be rated on several revised parameters after which the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) will approve them.

The changes in the accreditation criteria was to secure for India, a permanent membership to the Washington Accord, an international agreement among academic registering bodies of various nations. If India gets the permanent membership, NBA-approved engineering programmes in the country will be treated on par with technical degrees from countries that are party to the Accord.

The evaluation will be on a 1,000-point-scale. If a programme gets a minimum score of 750, it will get ‘Accredited’ status for five years from the date of issue of the letter from the NBA. “If the programme’s score is 600, accreditation will be for two years,” Mantha said.

Those courses that score less than 600 will not be accredited. Institutions, however, could subject programmes that do not get full approval again for accreditation after overcoming the shortcomings in them.

For both under graduate and PG courses, a set of eight evaluation criteria including pedagogy, relevance of curriculum, linkage with industry, recruitment of faculty, research facilities and placement of students have been specified. “The focus will be what the students are learning and how relevant are the learning outcomes for application,” Mantha said.

Evaluation and learning process will be a major condition for ranking, for which a total of 175 points have been set apart. A programme will need at least 115 points for approval. It will be ranked as per the quality of problems in assignments/tests/semesters, feedback in tutorial classes, learning beyond the syllabus and academic performance of the students.

For the PG courses, final year students will have to demonstrate their communicative skills, scientific and quantitative reasoning, critical analysis, logical thinking, creativity and capacity for self-learning.

Another factor will be ‘Faculty Contribution’, for which a programme needs to score at least 100 out of 150. Under this, teacher-student ratio, qualification and retention of faculty, quality of their research and also their interaction with the outside world will be taken note of.