The University of Madras has received the University Grants Commission’s (UGC) recognition to offer 35 distance education programmes from this academic year. Earlier this year, the UGC had granted permission only for two courses.
The recognition comes as a boost to the cash-starved institution, which has been heavily dependent on the revenue the Institute of Distance Education (IDE) generated.
As much as 95% of the total enrolment in the IDE was in 12 subjects: management studies, commerce, computer science, English, Tamil, criminology, politics and public administration, mathematics, history, economics, psychology and yoga.
Cracking down on ill-equipped distance education courses, the UGC had earlier ordered closure of study centres of universities outside the State and refused to grant approval for IDE courses which were being offered without adequate faculty members. Following this, in August, the university Syndicate approved the transfer of faculty from the regular departments to the IDE as a temporary measure until fresh recruitment was undertaken in the IDE.
Vice Chancellor P. Duraisamy said the UGC had now granted recognition for all the 35 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes for which it had applied. “It covers 93% of our student enrolment in the IDE,” he said.
“We have given an undertaking to the UGC on following the regulations of the AICTE and NCTE following which the UGC granted approval for six of our MBA and MCA programmes,” he said.
Mr. Duraisamy had earlier introduced some far-reaching reforms such as bringing the IDE programmes under the Choice Based Credit System and permitting students to take up to 20 credits under the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Students have also been given the option of moving from regular course to the IDE.
