Accreditation of educational institutions will help students assess the quality of programmes and courses, physical infrastructure and faculty. At present, only a fraction -- about 15% institutions -- are accredited.
HRD minister M M Pallam Raju said both Universities Grants Commission (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) have been tasked with preparing benchmarks for the accreditation process. In fact, the ministry will be writing to state governments to establish accreditation agencies that will inspect institutions on these regulatory benchmarks.
AICTE has also been asked to set up another accreditation agency — Indian Board of Accreditation — that will assist the existing National Board of Accreditation in inspections of institutions. "There was need felt for a new accreditation body and AICTE will set up the IBA by February," Raju said.
AICTE has under it 3,800 technical institutions, 3,700 management institutions, 3,500 polytechnics, 240 hotel management institutions and 60 applied art institutions. These institutions approach AICTE every year for either renewal of their accreditation or for introduction of new disciplines or other expansion plans. There are 60,000 programmes that are accredited under AICTE at present.
"There is a long pendency already and once the process is made mandatory, the waiting period will only increase. We have to build our capacity before that," AICTE chairman Prof S S Mantha said.
Under the NARA bill, existing universities will be given six years to complete the accreditation process while new universities will be allowed to complete teaching two batches of students. However, it remains unclear how the government will succeed in enforcing the accreditation process through rules.
HRD ministry officials said that under the UGC Act, the commission was empowered to shut down a department if there was non-compliance. However, that has not been done so far.
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