India In Elite Tech Studies club

Washington Accord, is a 10-member apex global organisation that determines standards of engineering education. The Washington Accord currently has 10 members — Australia, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, UK and USA.

:Building on its education advantage, riding on the excellence of its top-notch engineering institutes and holding out the prospect of flooding the world with qualified engineers, India has taken a big leap forward in bringing its next rung of engineering colleges up to speed.

In a move that combined diplomacy with education, India is made a provisional member of the Washington Accord, a 10-member apex global organisation that determines standards of engineering education in June 2007. The US-based organisation admitted India as a provisional member for two years after which it will become a full member. India’s candidature was proposed by UK, Australia and Canada, with a generous recommendation by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

What does this mean for India? Well, it means Indian undergraduate engineering degrees will ultimately be given "equivalency" in all member countries, that is, they will be recognised as engineering degrees of high international standard. Right now, only the elite IITs or BITS Pilani-type institutes qualify. But after that there’s a huge drop to the next level, said sources.

India had applied in 2005 for membership to the accord, but had missed it by a whisker. This year, it used diplomatic capital to assure itself a place in the global group.

India has been pursuing membership of the accord to substantially improve the quality of its second and third rung engineering colleges. In the next two years, the Indian nodal agency, in this case the AICTE, will work with teams from member countries to update assessments and quality of faculty and courses in Indian engineering institutes to bring them up to international standards.

In fact, during a recent visit by ASEE to India, the president of the American body went on record to say that engineering education by and large in India does not meet global market requirements both in quantity and quality. US education presently generates 70,000 engineers every year, down from 85,000 in the 1980s. The Indian problem is that while Indian engineers have a better theoretical grounding than many other countries, their applications knowledge or abilities to work in cross-cultural ambience is poor.

Until this year, provisional members included Germany, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan. However, China, the other country churning out engineers, is not yet a member.

The accord, set up in 1989, "is an agreement between the bodies responsible for accrediting professional engineering degree programmes in each of the signatory countries".

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