Only one in every five engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu offers
accredited courses. The state’s rating has slipped since 2009, when the
National Board of Accreditation (NBA) said 164 technical institutions in
the state offered accredited courses, among the highest in the country.
In Tamil Nadu, the fee for NAB-accredited courses is higher. While a
government quota seat in a non-accredited course costs 40,000, an
accredited course costs 45,000. Even this has not helped. “Many
institutions don’t go for accreditation even after seven years because
they know they will fail, so they postpone applying for the process,”
said IIT Kanpur chairman M Anandakrishnan. There are some colleges that
are 15 years old and have still not applied for accreditation.
Accreditation is the only means to judge the quality of a course, and
the only way to catch crooks,” said Anandakrishnan. Educational
consultant P Moorthy Selvakumaran said that though it was optional for
colleges to choose whether they wanted to go in for an accreditation or
not, it was important because employers want only students who have
completed accredited courses and because many embassies offer visas only
to students who pass out of accredited courses.
Only institutions where two batches of students have passed out can
apply for NBA accreditation. Courses are given provisional accreditation
for two years or a permanent accreditation depending on the scores
given by the evaluating team. Institutions can go in for reaccreditation
after expiry of the three- or five-year period.
The NBA, set up by the All India Council for Technical Education
(AICTE) in 1994, evaluates engineering and management courses offered by
institutions on a 1,000-point scale based on eight criteria, including
the teaching-learning process, research and development and the quality
of faculty.
The National Authority for Regulation in Accreditation of Higher
Education Bill that makes accreditation of all courses mandatory is
still pending in Parliament.
No comments:
Post a Comment