In the current scenario, students and parents find it difficult to select through the 535 colleges and 54 old branches that would set off to a illustrious career. In order to ease students selection process, the quality certification like Accreditation by National Board of Accreditation (NBA), New Delhi is a healthier solution. However, only few institutions, less than around 20% have this minimum quality assured certification.
According to the professor during the 11th Five year plan, NBA was a part of All Council for Technical Education for providing quality certificate to the better performing Engineering colleges and Branches. Later, the government of India decided to provide autonomy for NBA as a separate body to provide quality in technical institutions as scores of engineering colleges in the country is producing over 18 lakh engineers every year.
Now, NBA has become a separate statuary body to access the technical programs under Washington Accord, which is internationally, accepted accrediting process. The countries like UK, USA and Germany etc are the permanent members of such a forum.
Apart from benefiting students, it benefits institutions to avail various funds from Central agencies like MHRD, UGC, DIT, DST and AICTE, he further added. Today, the poor performing Engineering colleges are the main reason for the increasing engineering seats lying vacant in Tamil Nadu, providing an opportunity for students to take second decision to opt for arts degree or some other options.
Most of the Self-financing Engineering colleges are only focusing to attract students for filling their seats through advertisement, but less interested to improve their quality through a proper educational system.