India may miss its deadline for full membership with Washington Accord ensuring compatibility of Indian engineering degrees with the international ones as the Centre is yet to decide on the revamping of the curriculum and evaluation system of engineering and technical courses.

Even though three months have elapsed since the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) under the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) was taken as a provisional member of the Washington Accord, not a single step has been taken in this direction. The Washington Accord is an agreement between the bodies responsible for the accrediting professional engineering degree programs in each of the signatory countries including the US, the UK, Australia and Japan.

Recognition
In case India can get the full membership, the engineering degrees conferred upon by the Indian institutes would be considered at par with those from the developed nations and Indian students would not have to sit for a separate examination or enroll for training courses for getting jobs or practicing licenses in those countries.

“But in order to achieve that India has to overhaul the curriculum and evaluation system for the engineering courses and the institutes providing them with more emphasis on the actual performance of students in industries rather than physical infrastructure and faculty,” a source told Deccan Herald.

“Thus revamping the entire system and completion of the first cycle of accreditation and evaluation should be undertaken within the next one year so that the performance report from India can reach the Secretariat of Washington Accord in New Zealand by February 2009,” he said.

But the government is yet to hold even the preliminary round of meeting with the Vice-Chancellors of different universities and heads of institutes providing engineering programs on the change of curriculum and evaluation system.

AICTE headless
The AICTE, the apex body for engineering and technical education in the country, does not have a chairman since the last three months.

The new curriculum would have an increased content of both the engineering science and the fundamental science in engineering education.

Communication and management skills would also be introduced in the syllabus. Two groups of electives would be made available to students. While the professional electives would give students more depth in core engineering subjects, the free electives would offer them with a wider variety of subjects.

The project component would also be increased and the specialization would be brought to the Master’s level. 
“In case India fails to make it to the Washington Accord, it will adversely affect the job prospects of Indian engineers as doubts would be cast on the credibility of degrees offered by the Indian institutes,” the source said.