AICTE Urges Higher Education Institutions to Seek Accreditation by 2020

Chairman for the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Anil Dattaraya Sahasrabudhe said that it would become mandatory of higher education institutions to publish their accreditation status on their websites, and urged them to become accredited by the year 2020. Speaking at the National Conference on Indian Higher Education in Kolkata, he said, “All the technical and higher education institutions should go for accreditation by 2022 to encourage healthy competition among them. This would help improve the overall quality of higher education in the country. The process has started from 2018.” For those colleges that do not opt for accreditation, they will have to pay an annual fee of Rs. 1 lakh as an enrolment fee, he added.

Speaking about the different durations of accreditation that were available to institutions, based on the various criteria that they managed to fulfill, the Chairman said, “Some colleges with good infrastructure will be given six years of accreditation while the moderate ones will get three years of accreditation. The colleges that will not meet certain criteria like infrastructure, quality of teachers, placement and entrepreneurship records will not be accredited.”

He also commented on the role that a visible accreditation status plays for those who seek to enroll themselves or parents of children seeking to find a suitable institution, saying, “It would be mandatory for the institutions to publish their accreditation status on the official website so that the students and their parents may know about its infrastructure and other important attributes before enrolling.”