'Centre planning to come up with National Accreditation Council'

KOLKATA: The Centre is planning to come up with the National Accreditation Council (NAC) and bring all the agencies involved in grading of higher education institutions under its ambit.

"The single umbrella NAC will enable us to set up norms for all accreditating agencies like NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), NBA (National Board for Accreditation) and others. The four pillars of higher education that includes accreditation, regulation, standard setting, grants or allocation will be streamlined by the setting up of NAC," K.K. Aggarwal, Chairman of NBA said on the sidelines of the event "The Education Technology trends in India - Vision 2025' organised by the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) .

According to Aggarwal , among the 50000 higher education institutions in the country less than 20 percent are accreditated and the need is to bring all the institutions under the ambit of accreditation.

Referring to the recent NIRF ranking of institutions where among the 10 best ranking ones, eight are engineering institutions, he said over emphasis on any particular discipline is not good for a country.

"There should not be so much hype about certain disciplines and a balance should be maintained so that the students can choose the discipline of their choice, Engineering is necessary but it cannot alone develop a country,"Agarwal said.

Dr. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) who joined virtually, said: "Education technology has helped Indian students in bringing various positive changes which were not imagined before within a short span of time. But here education should be of utmost importance to help students be skill oriented, knowable and job-ready for the market. This is where the technology should bring in to elevate the desired change to utilise Ed-tech to its full potential." Among the other speakers who graced the event include H.E. Nick Low, British Deputy High Commissioner, Kolkata, Dr. Prof. Suranjan Das, Vice Chancellor, Jadavpur University, Prof. Saikat Maitra, Vice Chancellor, MAKAUT and Satyam Roychowdhury, Chairman , ICC National Expert Committee on Higher Education & Training, Chancellor,Sister Nivedita University to name a few.