Universities with Top NAAC Score to Offer Online Degree Courses: Javadekar

Universities or institutions with NAAC grade of A++ and A+ will be empowered to offer three-year undergraduate degree programmes in an online mode. These online degree courses offered by universities will be treated at par with regular courses. At present, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD Ministry) is framing guidelines for online degree courses.

Addressing the 65^th CABE meeting at New Delhi, Union HRD Minister, Mr. Prakash Javadekar revealed that close to 15% institutes with A+ and A++ NAAC grade will get an opportunity to offer online degree courses. Not only that, the universities will also have complete autonomy to prepare the syllabus, curriculum and set question papers for the online degree courses. However, these universities will need to follow certain norms prescribed the higher education regulator, he added.

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Mr. Javadekar further assured that the guidelines and rules for online degree courses would be notified by the next month.

In the current scenario, a handful of universities and institutes across the country are offering online courses that are either not following norms or for which the enrolment is not satisfactory. Once the guidelines are framed and notified, universities with top NAAC grades will be enabled to offer online courses. On the other hand, universities with poor NAAC grade will be given a two-year period to either improve the NAAC grade or discontinue its course.

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With certain norms for online degree courses, more students will evince keen interest in joining these courses. In the same way, the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) will improve to some extent.