Best Practices for Quality Improvement—Lessons from Top Ranked Engineering Institutions

Abstract

<p class="apa">Maximum number of privately funded engineering institutions have been established in India in the last two decades to meet the growing needs of technical manpower required by the Engineering and IT companies as well as aspiring students after completion of the Pre-University Program. However, a large number of institutions have not been able to attract the talented students for their undergraduate programs. The private managements of those institutions have realized then, the need for maintaining high quality in imparting engineering education. In addition, the regulatory bodies like NBA insist on maintaining the quality in the educational programs before giving accreditation. Therefore, the young institutes need to know the best practices adopted by the high performing institutions and introduce those best practices in their programs. In this paper, an attempt has been made to identify the best practices of the reputed and ranking institutes, to classify and codify those practices so as to enable the young institutes to implement them. Quality indicators have been identified through literature review, by summarizing previous studies, by conducting discussion with experts in the field. A few top ranked engineering institutions are selected to identify and list the best practices, by referring to the finding of various magazines. Practices followed with respect to the quality indicators identified have been composed by conducting structured interviews and discussions with various core groups &amp; stake holders of these institutions. The details of literature review, data collection &amp; analysis, findings and policy implications of the research work are presented in this paper. The best practices enlisted through this study will act as guidelines to implement the quality initiatives for the young institutions.</p>