IIT Foundation to accredit Engineering Colleges in India

The IIT Foundation for Accreditation and Assessment has been formed to reform the engineering and technical education in the country. The IFAA has been formed as a collaboration between IIT Madras, IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur which will take over the accreditation work of the National Board of Accreditation.

While the IFAA currently is looking for a new CEO, the Ministry of Human Resource Development had proposed setting up a company under the Companies Act 2013 to expedite the accreditation process of the engineering colleges in the country. The idea for the same was put forth by the ministry at the IIT council Meeting conducted recently.

The proposal put forth is to make sure that the IIT’s and IIM’s actively participate in the accreditation of the engineering colleges with a goal of making the company self-sustainable and also assist the present assessors, the NBA and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council of NAAC to maintain the standard of technical education.

In the IIT council meeting conducted recently, the proposal which was initially brought in by former education minister Prakash Javadekar to set up a self-sustainable company was put forth and accepted.

The CEO of the company will be appointed from the serving or superannuated IIT faculty and will be responsible for the overall operation, academic, administrative and financial functions of the company and develop an unbiased framework for the analysis of the institutions which will be efficient and transparent in order to take up the accreditation needs of the colleges and the universities which offer engineering programmes.

The directors of IIT earlier were not very supportive of the idea stating that the proposed role will affect the teaching and research in technical education but however agreed to provide limited assistance and expertise to the idea so that the core functions of the institutions will remain unaffected. It was later on decided that the company will be set up to operate in a self-sustainable mode.

The company will also help in addressing and participating in an open call or invitation to extend its services to the UGC or the AICTE to take up the accreditation activities and will have no interference from the Ministry or the IITs.

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