Not-So “Fantastic” Four!

The University Grant Commision A.K.A UGC has decided to suspend the distance Engineering degrees awarded by four different Universities, considering them insufficient and not up to the mark of standards. due to the orders of the Supreme Court of India, which earlier this month had restrained all the deemed universities from offering any distance learning courses.

The four universities for the SCI are,

1. Janardan Rai Nagar, Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth University
2. Institute of Advanced Studies Education Deemed University, Rajasthan
3. Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Uttar Pradesh
4. Vinayaka Missions University, Tamil Nadu

If someone is planning to do a distance education, please drop your plans.

Is Something’s Wrong With “University”!

UGC has released a list of 123 deemed to be universities to remove the tag of “Universities” from their names. The list includes, BITS Pilani, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and private colleges like Amity, SRM, vellore institute of Technology along with many others.

Supreme court of India asked these universities to take off the names in a month, after the issuance of the court order, which was on November 3, 2017. According to SC, the universities have violated the Section 23 of the UGC Act. But was this not too late to consider, since the Act was passed in 1957? An alternative, “The Deemed to be University” is preferred by many former Universities, and has been put forward to the Human Resource Department.

All the Institutions should select and change their names before the deadline, the sooner, the better.

Institute of Eminence

The Third out of the Arsenal is the “Institute of Eminence”, A.K.A IOE. The University Grants Commision will start on a new venture of setting up World Class Institutes in all aspects. The main objective is to provide greater academic, financial, administrative and other regulatory autonomy to 10 public and 10 private higher educational institutions to emerge as world class institutes.

The institutions which will be declared as the IOE will have their freedom from the usual regulatory mechanisms to have their own path to attain international repute. The emphasis will be given to multidisciplinary initiatives like, High quality research, global best practices and international collaborations. These universities will have various inter-disciplinary courses apart from  regular courses. The courses will be designed in accordance with nations’ requirements and developing technologies.