UGC allows 8 state, deemed universities to offer 160 ODL programmes

NEW DELHI: Higher education regulator, University Grants Commission (UGC) has allowed eight more state and deemed universities to offer Open and Distance Learning Programmes (ODL) to the students. The list of universities and the undergraduate (UG) and postgraduate (PG) degrees they can offer as ODL programmes is on the official website, ugc.gov.in.

The universities which can now if ODL programmes are Andhra University, Kurukshetra University, Bharati Vidya Peeth University, Datta Meghe Institute of Higher Education and Research, Utkal University, Guru Nanak Dev University, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Osmania University.

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With this addition, the total number of state and deemed universities in the country that offer ODL programmes stands at 57.

160 UG, PG courses in ODL

The UGC has approved a total of 160 ODL programmes across the eight institutions. Of the eight, Osmania University has had the maximum number of courses approved – 70 – followed by Andhra University and Kurukshetra University, which will offer 21 courses.

The vast majority of the courses are postgraduate-level MA, MSc, MCom programmes with a handful of undergraduate courses included. The PG programmes are in English, history, political science, computer sciences, library sciences, commerce, journalism, education, physics, chemistry, botany and more. Osmania University, a state university in Hyderabad, has had the maximum number of undergraduate courses approved, including ones in commerce, varying combinations of three subjects from a pool of over a dozen.

The official notification released by the UGC in this regard said that all the eight state and deemed universities will be able to offer ODL programmes to the students enrolled in them, until they retain their position as category-1 institutions. In case they fail to do so, they will have to discontinue the programmes and inform the UGC about the same.