Union Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), in its drive to improve the quality of distance education, has decided to restrain the mushrooming of study centres and institutions offering technical courses like BTech, MTech and MBA.

On September 7, a committee, constituted by the ministry, recently approved only 26 universities and institutions as eligible to run technical courses under the distance education programme. The panel comprises members from the University Grant Commission (UGC), All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Distance Education Council (DEC) and is headed by Professor Raj Shekharan Pillai, Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University.

Director of DEC, Manjulika Srivastava, said: “For the first time, a joint committee has come out with conclusive decisions. It was also unanimous regarding the ban on conducting BTech, MTech, PhD and MPhil courses at distance education centres of approved universities.”

With this decision, the fate of an estimated five lakh students enrolled at around 3,000 study centres of Punjab Technical University, Sikkim Manipal University, Global University, Meghalaya; Vinayaka Mission, Tamil Nadu; IASE Sardar Sahar, Rajasthan; and Rajasthan Vidyapeeth hangs in balance.

In the approved list, there are only three universities from Uttar Pradesh — Allahabad Agriculture Institute Deemed University, Dayalbagh Educational Institution-Deemed University in Agra and Swami Vivekanand Subharthi University in Meerut. Two private institutions — Indian Institute of Carpet Technology in Bhadohi and NIMT Institute of Technology and Management in Ghaziabad — are also in the list.

The committee has approved four universities in Maharastra, two each in Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan and one each in Bihar, Punjab, Sikkim and Uttarakhand. Moreover, two institutes in Delhi and three in Haryana have also been given the approval.

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