AICTE To Help Students Stuck With Cancelled Degrees

In the wake of the technical degrees acquired through distance learning since 2001 being cancelled by the Supreme Court, the Union HRD ministry called for a meeting to help out the hundreds of students stuck in a dilemma with the decision. 

Education’s apex body AICTE is planning to conduct an aptitude test for students who had received their degrees between 2001 and 2005 through correspondence to counter the Supreme Court’s decision. The students can save themselves by clearing this aptitude test, which will be similar to the GATE-test.

A senior AICTE official has told HT, “We are examining the court order and may consider a GATE-like exam for which modalities will be worked out.” According to AICTE, engineering degrees cannot be offered through distance learning education. In its Open and Distance Learning Regulations 2017, University Grants Commission has laid down regulations for the minimum standards of instruction for the grant of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, according to a HT report.

Supreme Court on Friday (3rd November,2017) had restrained all the regarded universities throughout the country from continuing with the distance learning courses from the 2018-19 without prior approval of the AICTE and UGC. JRN Rajasthan Vidhyapeeth University, Udaipur; Vinayaka Mission Research Foundation, Salem, Tamil Nadu; IASE Deemed University, Rajasthan amongst others have been conducting distance education programmes without any approval of the UGC.

A CBI probe was also ordered by the Supreme Court into granting of backward-looking approvals to the four universities. The above mentioned universities have been directed by the court to return the tuition fee and other expenditure borne by the students for attaining the degree. The degrees of students from these institutions too were cancelled.

Rajguru Tandon

BW Reporters The author is a correspondent with BW Businessworld with keen interest in HR and employee welfare.