University Grant Commision (UGC) and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) are all set to issue regulations by early next year making accreditation mandatory for higher education institutes. Besides this, Human Resource Development ministry has planned to setup an Indian Board of Accreditation (IBA) to take care of accreditation related matters.
Ministry has sought to make it mandatory for every higher education institution and every programme to get accredited by an accreditation agency in order to certify academic quality. Highlighting the urgency of the accreditation issue, HRD Minister MM Pallam Raju said a new accreditation body under AICTE -- Indian Board of Accreditation will be set up.
The new body will run parallel to the existing National Board of Accreditation (NBA) under AICTE with the same set of functions, and would address the issue of capacity constraint, he said. Besides, it will also handle the expectant rush of awarding accreditation following the unveiling of the regulations.
The HRD minister said, “Over a period, the new body will follow the best practices of different countries and come out with new methodologies of evaluation.” “NBA under AICTE is overburdened with thousand of institutes and over 60,000 programmes”, he adds.
Indications are that the regulations by the two bodies would basically be mirroring each other. While UGC looks after general programme, AICTE governs the technical courses. Sources said the Ministry is also writing to the state governments to create accrediting agencies. Among the bills that remained pending was the National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010.
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