1. WASHINGTON ACCORD, ACCREDITATION AND QUALITY OF EDUCATION AMITABHA GHOSH INSA SENIOR SCIENTIST

2. Accreditation - Washington accord or no accord, India needs a robust accreditation regime for maintaining its reputation in technical education

3. Mechanism – A well established adequate system is essential. It could be as indicated below. Chairman, NBA New Delhi New Delhi Vice Vice Chairman 1 Chairman 1 Vice Vice Chairman 2 Chairman 2 Vice Vice Chairman 3 Chairman 3 Vice Vice Chairman 4 Chairman 4 Infrastructure of the four NITTTRs could be used to support the four Vice Chairmen to conduct the accreditation activities for the four regions of the whole country

4. To encourage the institutions to opt for accreditation a number of actions can be adopted by the Government. - Suitable Development Grants - Suitable Advantages in Government jobs - Allowing sponsored projects -Approving post graduate programmes -

5. Difficulty in derecognizing a large number of engineering colleges’ academic programmes – careers of a large number of students get adversely affected. That is normally not accepted by the society.

6. What makes a good engineer? - A strong foundation in the basic fundamental Engineering Sc subjects. - Basic sciences + mathematics - Mechanics (Newtonian, Solid, Fluid and Quantum) - Thermodynamics - Materials - Electronics, Electromagnetism - Exposure to Technical Arts - Engineering Graphics - Computational Techniques - Fabrication

10. A simplified curriculum based on a strong common core with a few professional courses can satisfy the need. This has been found through enquiry with a large number of advanced industries in USA. The next problem is to generate a very large pool of reasonably good teachers for these basic courses

11. IITs, IISc NITs, Govt. Colleges, Universities Private Colleges and Private Deemed Universities

12. The four NITTTRs can play a very significant role in upgrading the teaching standard for a large number of otherwise very average teachers by a retraining process involving an intensive training in the basic subjects with the help of well known teachers from reputed institutions like IISc, IITs etc. supplemented by a good training in the pedagogical aspects of teaching.