University World News - INDIA: Ban lifted on distance postgraduate courses

The University Grants Commission has lifted its two-year ban on masters and PhD courses through correspondence, the U-turn apparently forced by legal opinion against the move following protests from universities, writes Basant Kumar Mohanty for The Telegraph.

Open universities like Ignou and several general universities had protested the ban on the ground that their respective laws, passed by parliament or legislatures, allowed them to offer such courses. Ignou even continued to offer such programmes. Faced with the resistance, the higher education regulator sought legal opinion on whether it could override such powers conferred by the acts to the universities.

Last month, the UGC held a meeting where it was decided to drop the ban. "An open university may be permitted to conduct MPhil-PhD programmes through distant education mode subject to condition that it does so strictly as per the provisions of the UGC regulations," said the minutes of the meeting. "We will follow the rules but our regulations are already stricter than those of the UGC," said Ignou Vice-chancellor Rajasekharan Pillai.