NBA and PTU join hands for quality technical education

Kapurthala, February 12, 2013: Today the world industry needs quality, capability and knowledge of professional sector. Each and every institution work on these points, which needs improvement at this stage as well as this improvement, needs an accreditation. Making this equation a strong one, National Board of Accreditation (NBA) and Punjab Technical University (PTU) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the basic objective of improving the quality of technical education and make it more relevant to the profession concerned.

This MoU is the part of IEA (International Engineering Alliance), which refers to the six international agreements governing mutual recognition of engineering qualifications and professional competence. In each of these agreements countries/economies who wish to participate may apply for membership, and if accepted become members or signatories to the agreement. In broad principle, each country/economy must meet its own costs, and the body making application must verify that it is the appropriate representative body for that country/economy. 

The MoU provides for the conduct of workshops/seminars by NBA for the benefit of stakeholders in technical education i.e. institutions, faculty members, etc. The basic objective of the workshops would be to introduce the stakeholders to the Outcome Based Education which is a pre-curser to the Outcome Based Accreditation.

During this MOU signing ceremony, Dr. Rajneesh Arora, Vice Chancellor, Punjab Technical University, said that strength of PTU in technical Education is huge with 494 affiliated colleges. Students from all over India and neighbouring countries are getting technical and professional education through PTU. Lakhs of students are getting good education but to uplift the standard of education from good to quality education, we need to join a professional and reliable organisation like NBA. 

Dr. Buta Singh Sidhu, Dean Academics, PTU, said that being an affiliating university for all Technical Institutions in the State of Punjab, we have the responsibility to ensure high quality technical education of relevance. Considering this, National Board of Accreditation, has requested PTU for becoming the Nodal Centre for conducting NBA’s awareness and training Programmes in the States of Punjab, H.P., J&K, Haryana(Northern Region) and UT of Chandigarh. The PTU has agreed to that and would coordinate conducting  the NBA’s awareness and training programmes for the stakeholders in technical education in the above state.  

For and on behalf of NBA Dr. D.K. Paliwal,Member Secretary and from PTU side Dr. H.S. Bains signed MoU. It is felt that this MoU will give a new direction to the efforts for improvement of quality and relevance in technical education in the State of Punjab.