Thursday, July 03, 2008
Chennai: Within the next two months, the University of Madras hopes to ensure all graduates of its distance education programme, right from the 1980s onward, have degrees that are approved by the Distance Education Council.

“We will apply for post-facto approval within a week. We will pressure the council to come through with their approval within a month. It has promised to act as early as possible,” said G. Mohanram, director of the University’s Institute of Distance Education, after returning from a council meeting held in New Delhi on Tuesday.


The university applied for recognition in 2005, as soon as it received a circular informing that a 1995 Act stipulated that only distance education degrees issued by the council-recognised institutions would be accepted for Central Government recruitment. Recognition was finally awarded in 2007. Students who graduated before that date need retrospective recognition for their degrees.

“I hope that the approval comes in time to help my case. We will make a representation to the Staff Selection Commission,” says G. Ananda Krishnan, whose 2002 B.Com degree was rejected by the Commission in May.

“Madras University should have taken action earlier. It came as a shock when I was rejected as I didn’t even know about the rule,” he says.

The university may be attempting to make amends now, but there are still a large number of universities which have not bothered to apply for recognition and which question the the council’s authority over open universities and distance education programmes of dual-mode universities. The council is now a wing of the Indira Gandhi National Open University .

“There are questions about how one university can have authority over others. It should be made a statutory body such as the UGC [University Grants Commission] or AICTE [All India Council of Technical Education],” said Dr. Mohanram.