UGC Approves 98 Community Colleges across the Nation

The students who are willing to pursue various skill based courses after class 12 can get relief while choosing colleges. The University Grants Commission has approved 98 community colleges all over the nation to offer skill based courses.

Maharashtra leading the numbers with getting permission for 16 colleges followed by 13 for Tamil Nadu, 11 for Kerala and 4 for Assam.  The duration of these courses will be from six months to two years and the courses will offer certificate, diploma and advanced diploma.

UGC received about 320 proposals from across the nation for these skill based colleges. The present list of the colleges comes under a part of UGC’s 100 community college scheme that was introduced on the basis of 12th five year plan. The main aim of setting up so many colleges is to offer the standardized and acceptable skill based programmes nationally. These degrees will help in reduction of unemployment in the society and create some fields of employment for the youth. The courses are even helpful for those who cannot afford expensive college degrees for such courses.

A few courses that are being offered are on tourism and hospitality, power plant, chemistry, information technology, food processing, horticulture, healthcare, automobile management and cast iron foundry. All the courses are accredited and will be taught by some of the core and guest faculty from the industry. Each course will have 60 seats and the curriculum will be monitored by UGC.

As per the UGC officials the community college concept is very popular in some of the countries like US, UK, Japan, Australia, Canada and some other countries as well. It helps the students to provide an additional layer of education where the students can easily learn practical skills as well as get theoretical knowledge from universities if they wish to.