10/19/2016
Lucknow: India's higher education regulator has de-recognised 21 off-campus educational institutions across the country. Distance education imparted by Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia and TERI University, Karnataka's Mangalore University and Kuvempu University and five UP universities, including Allahabad's Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences (SHIATS) are among those that will be suspended for academic session 2016-17 to 2017-18.
As per the list of Institutions recognised to offer education through distance mode, University Grants Commission (UGC), has approved 85 institutions for academic session 2016-17 to 2017-18 as against 106 which were approved last year.
In UP, only five institutions, UP Rajashri Tandon Open University, Swami Vivekanand Subharti University, Aligarh Muslim University, Integral University and Dayal Bagh Educational Institute will offer distance education for the current academic session. Institutions like Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, Teethankar Mahaveer University, Moradabad, SHIATS, Allahabad, NIMT, Greater Noida and NIMT Institute of Technology and Management, Ghaziabad will have to suspend off-campus operations for current academic session.
In Maharashtra, two institutions, International Institute of Population Studies and Rashtrabhasha Prachar Samiti Gyan Mandal have been de-recognised by the UGC to impart distance mode of education.
Bihar's Patna University will no longer provide distance learning education. In fact, three other institutions, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University and Jai Prakash University are among those to suspend off-campus centre for academic session 2016-17 to 2017-18. Magadh University and Bodhgaya will continue their off-campus centres, while Lalit Narayan Mithila University has been added recently.
By Isha Jain