New scheme rolled out to help engg colleges get NBA tag

Hyderabad:A new scheme unveiled by the Union HRD Ministry and AICTE to help colleges seeking accreditation fromthe National Board of Accreditation (NBA).

According to the scheme, experts from reputed institutions will help colleges reduce dependency on private consultants to get the NBA tag.

Certainly, it will give freedom to about 600 engineering and other technical institutions in Telangana and Andhra Pradeshnot to depend onprivate consultants in the preparation of reports seeking accreditation for various courses.

Accordingly, the AICTE will engage the serving or retired faculty known to have proven knowledge about the accreditation process.

They will guide the institutions identified which are yet to be accredited.

The guides are expected to function from the prestigious institutes identified as nodal centres/mentor institutes.

Also, every MI will have a few education experts, mentors, and guides (Margdarshaks).

In turn, they will guide and mentor few Institutes, located near their place of residence or institutes, to improve the required quality parameters in the institute to enable them to apply for NBA accreditation of their programmes.

According to the AICTE, there are 196 undergraduate and postgraduate courses being offered by the engineering colleges in Telangana have been accredited by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA).

Similarly, in Andhra Pradesh 144 suchcourseshave NBA accreditation as in April 2018.

Speaking to The Hans India, senior officials ofJNTU Hyderabad and Kakinada said hundreds of engineering colleges have mushroomed inerstwhile Andhra Pradesh since '90s,however, the number of colleges offering the NBA accredited courses is very little.

On top of it, some colleges in both States have been facing allegations of manipulating the accreditation process and managing the number of faculty and other requirements at the time of the inspections.

A senior official in the academic and evaluation wing of JNTU-Kakinada said "It is not that the phenomenon is limitedto Andhra Pradesh only.

Though the number of NBA accredited colleges is growing, only 16 per cent of the courses are being offered by these technical colleges in the country are NBA accredited," he said.

On top of it, some countries also have stopped recognising the BTech and MTech and other technical degrees at the UG and PG levels accredited by the NBA.

It was against this backdrop that the HRD Ministry and AICTE have unveiled a new scheme called 'Margadarshak'(Guide).

The main role of the guides is that they would assist in training the teachers, Outcome-Based Education (OBE), improving the pedagogy, focus on technical skill, personality development skills, innovation and creating capacity and capability to solve problems among students, developing better teaching-learning, and assessment including laboratory.

In addition, the co-curricular and extracurricular components are also an integral part of their responsibility for the guides.

Further, in OBE, designing Programme Outcomes (POs) for a programme and Course Outcomes (COs) for each course are expected to be done by them and to carry out the process the guides can visit a maximum number of 10 times in a month.