The purpose of the accreditation by NBA is to promote and recognize excellence in technical education in colleges and universities - at both the undergraduate and post graduate levels. Institutions, students, employers, and the public at large all benefit from the external verification of quality provided through the NBA accreditation process. They also benefit from the process of continuous quality improvement that is encouraged by the NBA's developmental approach to promote excellence in technical education. Through accreditation, the following main purposes are served:

• 
  Support and advice to technical institutions in the maintenance and enhancement of their quality of provision;
• 
  confidence and assurance on quality to various stakeholders including students;
• assurance of the good standing of an Institution to government departments and other interested bodies;
• enabling an Institution to state publicly that it has voluntarily accepted independent inspection and has satisfied all the requirements for satisfactory operation and maintenance of quality in education.

The purpose and impact of accreditation goes far beyond quality assurance of an Institution and its programs. Major impacts of accreditation system are summarized below:

• Encourages quality improvement initiatives by Institutions.
• Improves student enrollment both in terms of quality and quantity.
• Helps the Institution in securing necessary funds.
• Enhances employability of graduates.
• Facilitates transnational recognition of degrees and mobility of graduates and professionals.
• Motivates faculty to participate actively in academic and related Institutional / departmental activities.
• Helps create sound and challenging academic environment in the Institution, andContributes to social and economic development of the country by producing high quality technical manpower.

Accreditation is a tool that stakeholders use to monitor, assess and evaluate the standards and quality of the education a student receives at a college, university or other institution of higher learning. Some of the major benefits enrolled students receive by attending an accredited institution / program are as follows:

• Accredited institution / program offers the highest quality education available;
• Accredited institution / program strengthens consumer's confidence, employers value degrees of an accredited program the most;
• Accreditation helps institutions to know their strengths, weaknesses and opportunities, pushes them to continuously improve their programs and give them a new sense of direction, identity and targets; and
• Accredited institution / progam demonstrates accountability to the public, commitment to excellence and continuous quality improvement.

Individuals, courses, and institutions are not accredited. NBA only accredits programs in Engineering, Computer Application, Pharmacy, Management, Hotel Management and Catering Technology.

General Information on Accreditation

The following general policies are the guiding principles for accreditation of programs offered by various technical institutions:

i) NBA accredits selected technical Programs of institutions and not the Institutions or its Departments / Centres as a whole.

ii) Institutions are invited to apply for accreditation through eNBA portal as per norms prescribed by NBA from time-to-time.

iii) Programs to be accredited should be offered by an educational Institution, which has been formally approved by the AICTE or the concerned regulatory authority.

iv) Programs from which at least two batches of students have graduated are considered for accreditation. The program should continuously be running without break with approval of the concerned regulatory authority during the whole duration of last two batches (for example: 5 years for UG engineering, 3 years for PG engineering, etc.).

v) The institution is required to pay accreditation fee as prescribed by NBA from time-to-time. The application fee is payable in two phases – 10 per cent at the time of submission of Pre-Qualifiers and balance 90 per cent fee at the time of submission of SAR once the Pre-Qualifiers are approved.

vi) The institution must submit Self-Assessment Report (SAR) online through e-NBA portal in the prescribed format in respect of each program proposed for accreditation.

vii) The title of a program to be accredited must be the same as shown on the graduating student’s degree and the approval letters of the concerned regulatory authority.

viii) Visiting Team, while evaluating the programs, should ascertain overlapping of resources and faculty for programs in an institution where AICTE has granted approval for 1st shift and 2nd shift.

ix) Part-time programs are not considered for accreditation.

x) Programs are evaluated in accordance with the accreditation criteria as specified by NBA.

xi) Institutions are required to represent the accreditation status of each program accurately and without ambiguity. If accreditation is withdrawn or discontinued or expires, the institution should no longer refer to the program as accredited.

xii) A two/three day’s onsite visit is a part of the accreditation process. A Visiting Team appointed by the NBA carries out the evaluation of the program. The institution is required to propose such sets of dates for the visit when the regular classes and all academic activities of the program applied for, are going on.

xiii) Institutions have the option of withdrawing a program during the exit meeting of the visit. The institution shall handover a written request to the Team chair during the exit meeting. No communication regarding withdrawal will be accepted after the visiting team has left the institution. No fee would be refunded in such cases.

xiv) The final decision made by the NBA is communicated to the educational institution, together with comments detailing strengths, weaknesses and scope for improvement.

xv) In the event of non-accreditation of a program, reasons for the same are also communicated by NBA to the institution.

xvi) If an institution is not satisfied with the decision of NBA regarding accreditation status, it may appeal against the decision to the Appellate Committee (AC) of NBA within 30 days of receipt of the communication.

xvii) Commencement of Accreditation Period:

• 
  In case visit of the Expert (Visiting) Team to an Institution is conducted between 1st July - 31st December, the Period of accreditation would commence from the on-going academic year (i.e. with effect from 1st July of the on-going academic year).
• 
  In case visit is conducted between 1st January to 30th June, the accreditation period would be from the next academic year (i.e. with effect from 1st July of the next academic year).
• 
  Same rules apply for deciding the validity period of accreditation periods of programs in appeal cases also.

xviii) If a program is ‘not accredited’ or withdrawn during the visit, a fresh application for accreditation of the same program can be considered one year after the date of previous visit of the Visiting Team.

xix) If an Institute causes postponement of the visit after the expert team has already been constituted for the purpose, an additional fee of 25% of the applicable accreditation fee shall be required to be paid by the Institute before the visit is rescheduled. If an Institute causes cancellation of the visit after the expert team has already been constituted for the purpose, a cancellation fee of 25% would be deducted from the accreditation fee paid by the institution. However, the additional/cancellation fee of 25% shall be charged/deducted in those cases where some expenditure on bookings on travel/Hotel stay etc. of Expert Team Members has already been incurred by NBA before the visit is postponed/cancelled by the Institution.

xx) For consideration of accreditation of Post Graduate program, it is mandatory that the corresponding Under Graduate program should have valid accreditation. However, this does not apply in cases for special PG programs that may not have a corresponding UG program. The special PG programs will be considered on case-to-case basis.

The accreditation criteria, processes, policies, and procedures are described in manuals mentioned below. 

These Manuals has been amended and the revised. These Versions of Accreditation Manual (May, 2019) will apply to accreditation visits from Augut 2019 onwards.  Accreditation Manual Version May 2019 is available for download:

General Manual for Accreditation (Version: May 2019)

Manual for Accreditation of Undergraduate Engineering Programs (Tier I Institutions) (Version: May 2019)

Outcome based education is targeted at achieving desirable outcomes (in terms of knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviour) at the end of a program. Teaching with this awareness and making the associated effort constitutes outcome based education. This entails a regular methodology for ascertaining the attainment of outcomes, and benchmarking these against the program outcomes consistent with the objectives of the program.

Initially, NBA accreditation used to be based on ‘input – process – output’ model with major emphasis on availability of resources / facilities and the outputs thereof. In the year 2009, NBA aligned its methodology with international benchmarks and started accreditation on the basis of outcomes. It believes that educational quality must be measured by outcomes rather than inputs, because inputs do not necessarily correlate with quality outcomes. Outcomes are dependent not only on inputs but also on the processes followed by an institution to convert inputs into defined outcomes.