Government removes IGNOU out of UGC regulation, Read details here

The government has removed the Indira Gandhi National Open University from the open and distance learning regulations of the University Grants Commission (UGC). This decision has put an end to a continued dispute between the higher education regulator and the country’s first national Open University.

The University Grants Commission amended its 2017 regulation keeping the Indira Gandhi National Open University out of its boundary as a special case months after the UGC agreed to it seeking the Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry to issue a direction in this matter.

The revised UGC Open and Distance Learning regulation, 2017 has been notified in an official gazette with effect from June 6, 2019. This is the fourth amendment in the open and distance learning regulations by the UGC since its first notification on June 23, 2019. The UGC and IGNOU have been in a feud from several years now over the power and jurisdiction of each of them which has lead to confusion among the students over the validity of some the professional programmes offered by IGNOU.

What added to the ongoing differences between IGNOU and the UGC is the framing of tough regulations by the higher education regulator for open and distance learning programmes in 2017 and the subsequent amendments.

The UGC and the IGNOU were also recently involved in a dispute over the UGC’s mandatory requirement for the Open University to seek approval from the respective regulators, which include the All India Council of Technical Education in order to offer professional courses like MBA and MCA in the open distance mode.

In the year 2018, the board of management at the National Open University decided to resume offering M.Phil and Ph.D. programmes from the academic year 2017-18 in spite of the UGC banning the Open University from offering such programmes as per the UGC regulation. IGNOU had earlier stopped the Ph.D. programs in the year 2014 following the UGC directive which asked all the 15 open universities in the country from offering research programmes in distance mode.