What NBA accreditation is

The National Board of Accreditation (NBA) accredits individual programmes, not institutions, in engineering and technology, management, pharmacy, architecture, hotel management and related technical fields in India. It was set up in 1994 under AICTE and became an autonomous body in 2010. In 2014 NBA became a permanent signatory of the Washington Accord, the international agreement under which accredited undergraduate engineering programmes are recognised as substantially equivalent across member countries. NBA's framework is entirely outcome-based: it asks whether a programme defines what graduates will be able to do, measures whether they can, and improves the programme using that measurement.

Tier I and Tier II

NBA runs two tiers with separate Self Assessment Report (SAR) formats. Tier I covers programmes offered by institutions with academic autonomy: universities, deemed universities, institutes of national importance and autonomous colleges. Tier II covers programmes at affiliated institutions that follow a university's curriculum and examinations. Washington Accord recognition applies to Tier I accredited programmes. The criteria are the same in substance for both tiers; the difference is in how much control over curriculum and assessment the institution is expected to demonstrate.

Eligibility

The institution holds the required statutory approval (AICTE, and university affiliation for Tier II).
At least two batches of the programme have graduated.
Pre-qualifier data on admissions, faculty and facilities meets NBA's thresholds for the tier.
Data is submitted for the current academic year and the two preceding years.

NAAC accreditation is not a prerequisite for NBA, and the two bodies assess different things: NAAC the institution across seven criteria, NBA each programme's outcomes. Our NAAC checklist covers the former.

The twelve Programme Outcomes

For undergraduate engineering, NBA prescribes twelve Programme Outcomes (POs), aligned with the Washington Accord graduate attributes. Every programme adopts them as written and adds two to four Programme Specific Outcomes (PSOs) of its own.

PO	Attribute
PO1	Engineering knowledge
PO2	Problem analysis
PO3	Design/development of solutions
PO4	Conduct investigations of complex problems
PO5	Modern tool usage
PO6	The engineer and society
PO7	Environment and sustainability
PO8	Ethics
PO9	Individual and team work
PO10	Communication
PO11	Project management and finance
PO12	Life-long learning

Each course's Course Outcomes (COs) map to these POs and PSOs, and attainment rolls up from COs to POs. The mechanics are in the OBE implementation guide.

The ten SAR criteria

The SAR for undergraduate engineering is organised in ten criteria, scored out of a total of 1,000 marks with weights that differ between tiers. The criteria on course and programme outcomes and on faculty carry the most weight, which reflects what NBA is really assessing: whether outcomes are measured and whether there are enough qualified people to deliver them. The marks per criterion and sub-criterion are in the current SAR manual for your tier on nbaind.org; the table below gives the focus of each criterion and the evidence it needs.

#	Criterion	What it asks	Evidence to keep
1	Vision, Mission and Programme Educational Objectives	Are the PEOs derived from the vision and mission, published, and reviewed with stakeholders?	Vision/mission statements and where they are displayed; PEO statements; stakeholder consultation records; mapping of PEOs to mission
2	Programme Curriculum and Teaching-Learning Processes	Does the curriculum deliver the POs, and is teaching designed around outcomes?	Curriculum with CO-PO mapping; course files; content beyond syllabus; project-based learning; industry interaction; internships; lab experiences; initiatives to improve quality of teaching
3	Course Outcomes and Programme Outcomes	Are COs written, mapped and attained, and do they add up to PO/PSO attainment?	CO statements for every course; CO-PO/PSO matrices; question-level assessment tagging; CO attainment per course; PO and PSO attainment with direct and indirect components; targets and gaps
4	Students' Performance	Enrolment quality, success rate, academic performance, placement and higher studies, professional activities	Admission data vs sanctioned intake; batch-wise pass percentages in stipulated time; CGPA distributions; placement and higher-studies records with proofs; student publications, competitions and professional-society activity
5	Faculty Information and Contributions	Faculty numbers, qualifications, cadre ratio, retention, research, development and participation	Student-faculty ratio by year; cadre proportion; PhD holders; faculty retention; publications, projects, consultancy; FDP participation; faculty as mentors and in professional bodies
6	Facilities and Technical Support	Classrooms, labs, technical staff and safety adequate for the programme	Classroom and lab inventories with utilisation; equipment adequacy per experiment; technical support staff; safety measures; additional facilities for the programme
7	Continuous Improvement	Is attainment used to improve the programme, and is improvement measurable?	Actions taken on CO/PO attainment gaps; improvement in success index and placement over years; curriculum changes and their outcomes
8	First Year Academics	How first-year teaching, outcomes and performance are managed	First-year faculty data; CO-PO attainment for first-year courses; first-year success rate; bridge courses and mentoring
9	Student Support Systems	Mentoring, feedback, co-curricular and career support	Mentoring system records; feedback analysis and action; professional-society chapters; entrepreneurship and career guidance; co-curricular participation
10	Governance, Institutional Support and Financial Resources	Does the institution's governance and finance sustain the programme?	Organisational structure and governing body; delegation of academic and financial powers; budget allocation and utilisation; library and internet resources; institutional quality policy

The process, step by step

Register and check eligibility. The institution registers on the NBA portal. A programme is eligible once at least two batches have graduated and the institution holds the required statutory approval. Pre-qualifier data is submitted first; the SAR invitation follows if it is met.
Submit the Self Assessment Report (SAR). The SAR is completed online against the ten criteria for the applicable tier, with data for the current and two previous academic years, and uploaded with supporting evidence.
Evaluation visit. An NBA team, typically three members per programme over about three days, verifies the SAR on campus: course files, attainment calculations, labs, interaction with students, faculty, alumni and management.
Outcome. Programmes are accredited for six years, for three years (provisional, with a compliance report required before any extension), or not accredited. Reasons are communicated criterion-wise.
Compliance and re-accreditation. Three-year accreditations require a compliance report addressing the deficiencies; re-accreditation applications are made before expiry with fresh data.

What the visit team actually checks

Evaluators spend most of their time on Criterion 3. They pick courses, open the course files, and trace a CO from its statement to the questions that assess it, the marks those questions produced, the attainment computed from them, and the action taken when attainment fell short. If any link in that chain is missing or was clearly assembled for the visit, the criterion suffers and so does Criterion 7. They then verify faculty records against appointment orders and salary, inspect laboratories against the SAR's equipment lists, and talk to students, alumni and employers about whether the PEOs are real.

Evidence checklist

Vision, mission, PEOs, POs and PSOs as published, with stakeholder review minutes
Curriculum with CO-PO/PSO matrices for every course, by regulation year
Course files: syllabus, lesson plan, question papers with CO and Bloom's tags, sample answer scripts, attainment sheet, action taken
Programme-level CO, PO and PSO attainment for the last two graduated batches, with the attainment policy
Admission, pass-percentage and CGPA data for three years against sanctioned intake
Placement, higher-studies and entrepreneurship records with proofs
Faculty list with qualifications, cadre, retention, research output and FDP records, consistent with AICTE and payroll
Laboratory inventories with experiment-wise adequacy and safety provisions
Mentoring, feedback and student-support records with analysis and action
Governance documents, budgets and utilisation for the programme

A 12-month preparation plan

When	What to do
Month 1	Appoint a programme accreditation coordinator and criterion owners; download the current SAR manual for your tier; audit which COs, mappings and attainment data already exist.
Months 2–3	Write or repair CO statements for every course; complete CO-PO/PSO matrices; fix the assessment-tagging process so this semester's data is clean.
Months 4–6	Compute CO, PO and PSO attainment for the last two completed batches; document actions taken on gaps (Criterion 7); assemble faculty, student-performance and facilities data.
Months 7–8	Submit the pre-qualifier; draft the full SAR with evidence indexed by criterion and sub-criterion.
Months 9–10	Internal mock evaluation by faculty from another department or a sister institution; close gaps.
Months 11–12	Submit the SAR; prepare course files, lab readiness and stakeholder briefings for the visit.

Twelve months is realistic only if attainment data already exists for the last two batches. If it does not, the honest sequence is: implement OBE properly for two full academic years, then apply.

Why programmes get three years instead of six

Pitfall	What to do instead
COs written to fit the question paper after the fact	Write COs first, tag questions to them when the paper is set, compute attainment from the tags
Every CO mapped to every PO at level 3	Honest 1-2-3 mapping with blanks; review at programme level so no PO is left unaddressed
Attainment computed once, in a spreadsheet, for the SAR	Attainment in the examination system every semester, with the method written in the programme's OBE policy
No evidence that attainment changed anything	A Criterion 7 register: gap, action, owner, result, per course per year
Faculty data that does not match AICTE and payroll records	One HR record for faculty; the same list for NBA, AICTE EoA and NIRF
Placement and higher-studies claims without proofs	Offer letters and admission letters captured by the placement cell at the time, attached to the student record

How a campus ERP supports NBA

NBA rewards programmes where outcome measurement is routine rather than a project. When COs, mappings and question tags live in the examination system, attainment is computed from the marks faculty already enter, the Criterion 7 register is a report of actions logged against gaps, and faculty, placement and facilities data are the same records used for AICTE and NIRF. Aveon's OBE and accreditation modules are built around that chain; see the NBA accreditation page and the college ERP software overview.

Sources and further reading

See CO-PO attainment computed from real marks

A demo of outcome definition, question tagging, attainment and the Criterion 7 register on your programme structure.

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NBA Accreditation Guide: Criteria, SAR Process and Evidence for Engineering Programmes