AICTE allows top 100 institutions to launch online courses

NEW DELHI: The technical education regulator, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has issued fresh guidelines for offering various technical courses through distance and online mode of education. The programmes are postgraduate degree, diploma or certificate ones.

In line with similar guidelines issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC) last year, the AICTE has also allowed institutions to offer courses in management and allied areas, computer applications, artificial intelligence and data science in engineering and technology domain, logistics and travel and tourism.

The council has also approved intake of three times the sanctioned intake of any programme in conventional or regular mode.

AICTE: Eligible institutions

According to the notification issued by the AICTE, as the new National Education Policy (NEP)-2020 has placed emphasis on increasing gross enrolment ratio (GER) through the use of technology, to fulfil the objectives of NEP-2020 and to promote ODL and online education, it has framed comprehensive guidelines for these modes.

The guidelines titled ‘AICTE (Open and Distance Learning Education and Online Education) Guidelines, 2021’ allow higher education institutions to apply for offering programmes through the open and distance learning mode or online mode. Institutions that have been scored 3.26 or above by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), or 700 or above by the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) score of 700 are eligible to apply. Also eligible are institutions that have been in the top 100 ranks of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) rankings at least twice in three preceding cycles. The three categories of institutions will be allowed to start full-fledged ODL or online courses without prior approval of the AICTE.

As per the AICTE guidelines, the institution recognised under these guidelines shall get all its programmes assessed through the Centre for Internal Quality Assurance once a year and undergo a third party academic audit every five years and an internal academic audit every year.

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