KOLKATA: Having a swanky campus or a handful of qualified teachers won't be enough for engineering colleges in Bengal to take in students. Approval of the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) will soon be mandatory for every course offered by these institutes, government-run or private.
Colleges that fail to meet the minimum criteria may even lose the affiliation of the West Bengal University of Technology. This comes in the wake of AICTE's proposal to make assessment compulsory for engineering programmes across the country.
"NBA is a statutory body under the HRD ministry. Just like the NAAC accreditation for general degree colleges, NBA accreditation will be mandatory for engineering institutes," said Abhijeet Chakraborty, vice-chairman of the state Council of Higher Education.
Most state-run colleges - like Jadavpur University, Besu and those in Durgapur and Jalpaiguri - have NBA accreditation. But private colleges have a very poor record. Only eight engineering programmes in the 91 AICTE-approved colleges have NBA certification. The council has written to WBUT to ensure that private colleges fall in line, said Chakraborty.
"Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra give incentives to engineering colleges running NAB-accredited programmes as they are allowed to charge a higher fee," an NBA official said, adding that accreditation has to be renewed every two to five years.
The IIT's, NIT's and institutes like BESU and JU are part of the tier I who run NBA approved programmes.
Bengal has 216 colleges combining both AICTE and non-AICTE colleges. The engineering colleges at the moment can seek NBA accreditation for programmes and not for institute.
The colleges have to inform the NBA details of their programmes - curriculum, admission process, teacher-student ratio, research activities and papers published by teachers - after which a central team will arrive for a campus inspection. The NBA team will also assess the performance of alumni of the previous three years. "NBA accreditation will help institutes bring in funds from AICTE programmes," said a WBUT official.
Bibhuti Bhushan Poira, advisor of Heritage Group of Institutes said, "Four of our programmes had NBA accreditation. They have expired. We have applied for six programmes."
