UGC Asks Technical Institutions to go for Dual Accreditation

As per the new regulations suggested by University Grants Commission (UGC), the technical institutes in that offer courses in engineering, pharmacy, hotel management, etc., may have to go for dual accreditation. The accreditation will be approved by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), however with advent of the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) for assessing the programmes offered by them, the dual accreditation will get complete after both approves the college as well as their offered programmes.

As per the new regulations, that are yet to be officially notified shortly, the procedure of sanction of new institutions, formerly done by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), has been combined with that of the affiliation process, which will be done by universities. They will not only process new applications, but also the clear extension of the existing ones.

The dual accreditation will help control the growing of colleges letting to surplus seats in these institutes, which have greater chances to go vacant each year, told an official.

Abhay Wagh, deputy secretary, technical education, Maharashtra, told that all decisions on technical institutes can be taken by UGC and the state will be bound to follow its mandate.

Directors of board of college and university development (BCUD) from all universities in Maharashtra as invited by the directorate of technical education talked about the matter on 3 April.

A Senior officials put his point on dual application in terms of level of transparency, he said that the earlier AICTE's approval process was online but if the new regulations come into force then it will be hard to scrutinize applications with individual universities having their own independent processes.

The New norms framed by UGC:

•    Technical colleges will have to go in for dual accreditation.
•    New colleges can be set up with prior affiliation from the universities. Permissions for closure of colleges, change of location, etc, will have to be taken from universities.
•    New colleges or extension of affiliation can be done based on state government's policy.
•    NAAC/NBA accreditation mandatory for permanent affiliation.