Accreditation: An Imperiative Step To Be Taken By The Higher Education Institutes

Accreditation would help in improving the overall quality of higher education in the country. An alarm has been set by AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) for all the Higher Education Institutes to get accredited by 2022. It has been declared as mandatory for such institutions to update their accreditation status on their official websites. Going through the stats; Only 15% of the Higher Educational Institutions in India are accredited, the rest 85% of the institutions are yet to accredited by any of the two accreditation agencies; either by NBA (National Board of Accreditation) or by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council). A ‘National Conference on Indian Higher Education’ was organized by EPSI and APAI in Kolkata in which the Chairman of AICTE, Anil Dattaraya Sahasrabudhe said, “All the technical and higher education institutions should go for accreditation by 2022 to encourage healthy competition among them. This would help improve the overall quality of higher education in the country. The process has started in 2018.”   He also added that some colleges with good infrastructure will be given six years of accreditation while the moderate ones will get three years of accreditation. The colleges will not be accredited if they will not be able to meet certain criteria like infrastructure, quality of teachers, placement and entrepreneurship records.   It has been made imperative for the Higher Education Institutions to publish their actual accreditation status on their official websites in order to provide the complete and accurate information both to the parents and the students; about the infrastructure and other idiosyncrasies before enrolling, in whichever the institutions they are thinking of An amount of Rs. 1 Lakh every year has been set as enrollment fees for those colleges/institutes that don’t choose accreditation. Sahasrabudhe also urged the institutions to go with a NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework), as it will surely help them to have a healthy global competition with premier institutions.