Pune: Following the Supreme Court’s (SC) directive that the degrees of the students, who had pursued correspondence courses in engineering from the four deemed universities in the country during 2001-2005, would be suspended, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) will conduct a test for these students to provide them with valid degrees.
The registration process for the same has already begun for the students enrolled for correspondence courses in engineering at the four deemed universities: the JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth, Institute of Advanced Studies in Education (IASE), Rajasthan, Allahabad Agricultural Institute (AAI) and Vinayaka Mission’s Research Foundation, Tamil Nadu.
Speaking on the issue, Anil Sahasrabudhe, Chairman, AICTE, said, “According to the SC judgement, the degrees/diplomas of the students, who completed their correspondence courses at the given universities, will remain suspended until these students enroll for and answer a test next year.”
“We are bearing the expenditure of conducting the test from the said universities, depending on the number of students appearing for the test from each of the four universities. The degrees of those candidates, who are not interested in answering an examination again, wouldn’t be validated. The SC has given them an option of getting a refund of the fees they paid for the courses from their respective university,” he said.
According to Sahasrabudhe, there are over 40,000 students belonging to all the four universities, who would be eligible for the examination. However, he said it is not yet known how many students would be reappearing for the test, as registrations have just begun.
The test schedule has not yet been fixed. According to the SC directive, the test might be held by June 2018.
“Also, the syllabus of the four universities is not the same. Hence, right now, alongside the registration process, our team is trying to figure out a common thread of syllabus and question paper pattern that would be fairly applicable to all students,” Sahasrabuddhe added.
Earlier this month, the SC, in its landmark judgement, restrained all deemed universities across the country from continuing any distance learning courses from 2018-19 without prior approval of the regulatory authorities. It also directed the UGC to restrain such institutions from using the word ‘university’ without the prefix ‘deemed’.
