Government Engineering Colleges in Assam: Current Status and Steps for Improvement

Abstract

The State Government has well understood the demand of technical education in the state and attention is focused on rapid development in this field, with global professional standards and international accreditation being recognised as the benchmarks for quality assurance. In this regard, it is important to understand an accord called “The Washington Accord”. This is an international agreement to ensure consistent quality of undergraduate engineering program across the World. Programs recognised by accrediting authorities in countries that are signatories are considered to be equivalent in terms of quality and the graduate attributes. In 2014, the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) India joined as a signatory for programs accredited by NBA offered by education providers accepted by NBA as Tier 1 institutions. In February 2015, the Government of Assam appointed an expert team from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University Australia to conduct an audit of technical education in the public sector. The purpose of the audit was to find the gaps that may exist in governance, curriculum, policies, guidelines and community engagement in relation to those to be required and found in a Washington Accord approved programme. This paper summarises some of the gaps. This is followed by recommendations to improve the technical education sector in Assam. The findings in the gap analysis are the first in a series of steps toward the long-awaited restructuring of the technical higher education sector in the state of Assam. It is now up to the Government of Assam to take the necessary steps in addressing the issues to re-energise the technical higher education sector and bring the public technical colleges to the forefront of quality Indian institutions offering international standard engineering education and infrastructure.