BENGALURU: Bengaluru's University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering (UVCE), the oldest engineering college in the state, may be graded by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) next year, for the first time. This marks a major effort to enhance quality of its courses and move forward with the times.
Accreditation by the NBA is increasingly being seen as a requirement by technical colleges to enhance the quality of education. The government, both central and in the state, have asked technical institutions to go for NBA accreditation. While a number of private colleges in the city and state have got themselves accredited by the agency, government colleges are still far behind.
Colleges have to, however, fulfil a number of requirements before they are eligible for accreditation by the NBA. Presently, the UVCE has already brought in the credit-based points system (CBPS) instead of the normal grading system, in fulfilment of NBA parameters.
CBPS is a grading system that comprises core, elective/minor or skill-based courses. The courses will be evaluated using the cumulative grade point average (CGPA). The aim is to provide a holistic and more broad-based education.
Professor KB Raja, head, Electronics and Communication Engineering, UVCE, says, “Our college has introduced the CBPS for all its undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. This is one of the major requirements in order to be graded by the NBA. Other courses under Bangalore University (UVCE is affiliated to BU) already have the CBPS system.”
Another major requirement is an optimum student to staff ratio. Presently, UVCE has a teaching staff strength of 100 against the required 175. “The All India Council for Technical Education (that governs all technical institutes in the country) recently changed the staff-student ratio from 1:15 to 1:20, making it easier for UVCE to fulfil the staff requirement. In the last syndicate meeting, there was also a lot of talk and planning on filling up vacant posts, so we are hopeful of fulfilling this requirement too. We are confident about NBA accreditation by next year,” he adds.