Indian Engineering Degrees now Accredited in the US

In a significant development, Indian engineering degrees will now be accredited in the United States and will be internationally recognised.

This follows India's induction into the prestigious Washington Accord, an international agreement between registering bodies of member countries accrediting academic engineering programmes, at the university level, leading to the practice of engineering at the full professional level.

Arguing the case successfully on behalf of India at the 8th biennial meeting of the International Engineering Meetings 2007 in Washington, DC last month was a delegation led by Prof Damodar Acharya, chairman of the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education, who, on July 1, assumed the directorship of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur; Ravi Mathur, joint secretary (technical), ministry of human resource development; and Prof Prasad Krishna, member secretary, National Board of Accreditation.

They were joined by Kamal Kant Dwivedi, counselor at the Indian Embassy and the government of India's point man for science and technology in Washington. Comprehensive reviews of the Washington Accord are performed at intervals of not more than six years and in terms of the agreement, each registering body accepts the accrediting processes of the other member countries. The founding signatories of the Accord in 1989 were: Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology, USA; Canadian Council of Professional Engineers; Engineering Council, EC, UK; Institution of Engineers of Ireland; Institution of Engineers, Australia; and Institution of Professional Engineers, New Zealand.

Currently, the Washington Accord member countries are: The US, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong, Japan, with Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan being provisional members. This year India's National Board of Accreditation of the All India Council for Technical Education was elected a provisional member, along with Russia and Sri Lanka. The Accord recognises substantial equivalence of programmes accredited by those organisations and recommends that the graduates of accredited programmes in any of the signatory countries be recognised by the other countries as having met the academic requirements for entry into the practice of engineering.

The NBA is the only authorised body in India entrusted with the task of undertaking accreditation of technical education programmes and all programmes on technical education, including those offered by university departments are accredited by the NBA. The NBA, as criteria for such accreditation, evaluates the quality of these programmes offered by educational institutions from diploma to the post-graduate levels in technical education including engineering.

India's entry to the Washington Accord would necessarily facilitate mobility of engineering graduates and professionals at international levels and the graduates from NBA-accredited programmes would be automatically accepted for education and employment purposes in member countries. A provisional member is given two years to bring its academic programmes, curricula and syllabus, examination and evaluation system to the international level and revise its accreditation system to make it fully outcome based, with credit system for flexibility and continuous evaluation for improved learning being the basis of such programmes.