Recently UGC has taken a radical step which is top 100 Universities giving online degrees. Can you elaborate on that?

Online education or E-learning or digital learning is the need of the hour now but Yes, my opinion is that face to face teaching is the best way of teaching learning because there are number of benefits of it and traditionally it has been there in India since the time immemorial but as of now we don't have any other option than to go for online education and for online education there are several options.

In India, the legal framework of online education is the recent phenomenon. In 2018 we came up with the online education regulation. Prior to that we were having open and distance learning and for that also regulation came in 2017 so this is the recent phenomenon in India but before that we were having the online education in the form of SWAYAM. SWAYAM regulation was formed in 2016 and in a big way all over India through e-content, SWAYAM prabha we started the online ODL.

As far as about the top 100 universities, firstly, it came in the budget announcement of the honourable Finance Minister last year when it was mentioned to promote online education in top 100 Universities. Now again in May, it was announced by the Finance Minister under the PM eVidya Programme where it was mentioned that top 100 Universities should be given permission to start online education.

We have revisited the total legal framework related to Open and Distance learning and online learning and we have revisited the regulation framework for making the top 100 and other good universities online.

SWAYAM regulation in 2016 already had the provision that the conventional teaching methodologies/courses which we have and the ODL programme can have upto 20% online content and credits from that can be transferred. So this was the provision through the medium of SWAYAM regulation.  Now, when we have the online regulation so that facilitates the full fledged degree to online mode.

I would like to tell students that we are emphasising on blended mode of education which means that we are planning to make the online content which was 20% with the conventional courses earlier to 40%. Universities can take the decision to adopt this and can give the online content upto 40% and 60% can be delivered through the conventional method.

Prof. Dhirendra Pal Singh
Chairman, University Grants Commission, Former Vice Chancellor of three universities - Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi; Dr. Hari Singh Gour University, Sagar; and Devi Ahilya University, Indore