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The UGC banned the distance learning courses in Agriculture courses by categorizing it in a professional and technical course. The step was taken after a request was received from the Agriculture Ministry of the Indian Government.
The University grants council widely known as UGC has taken a decision to not impart agriculture courses in distance education universities. The UGC took the decision in the meeting of the Higher Education Regulator where the topic of discussion was if agriculture is fit to be in the distance learning curriculum or not.
Due to UGC norms, the courses that are technical in nature and comprise practical affairs are not allowed to be conducted in a distance learning curriculum. The meeting held with the Higher Education Regulating committee identified Agriculture to be a fully technical course which is fit for classroom and field learning only with proper practical infrastructure which cannot be provided to distance learners.
A senior official said that the Union Agriculture Ministry in a letter to Open and Distance Learning (ODL) council had asked to ban the agriculture courses from distance learning curriculum.
The UGC council does not allow professional courses to be taught in distance learning. Such courses include medicine , engineering , nursing , dental , pharmacy , architecture and physiotherapy with agriculture as the newest addition.
So, what happened to those people who are already enrolled in distance agriculture program? Well, in that case, the Indian Council of Agriculture research is known as ICAR which also gives affiliation to agriculture colleges is asked to give assistance to the students, as informed by a high official.
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Though the kind of assistance ICAR will provide has not been made clear, the enrolment of agriculture courses in open universities will be closed from the upcoming 2019-20 academic year.
Some of the open universities that were offering distance Agriculture courses were Yashwant Rao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (YCMOU), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Annamalai University, Kuvempu University, and Nalanda Open University.
Also Read: Agriculture courses seeing a high number of vacant seats
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