IGNOU Jammu centre to launch masters in journalism

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, August 2

The Jammu Regional Centre of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has finally got a nod from New Delhi to introduce Masters Degree Course in Journalism and Mass Communication (MJMC) from January 2016. However, the recent direction of the Higher Education Department to the centre for vacating the building of the Commerce College has put the authorities in a fix.

The course will be done through distance education from new academic cycle commencing January 2016. Earlier, the programme was scheduled to be launched in January this year, but that did not happen.

Sources said the Jammu Regional Centre of the university was presently under tremendous pressure after it was asked to vacate the building of Government Sri Pratap Memorial Rajput (SPMR) College of Commerce, Canal Road, which is being utilised by it to run its academic affairs since its inception in 1998. The department had taken this stance after Commerce College had intimated that it faced serious space crunch to accommodate its own students.

Sources added that the centre was allowed to continue with the admission process for various programmes for the July academic cycle, but now the centre has intensified its efforts to look for new building. “It is no doubt a good news that the IGNOU Jammu Centre is going to launch journalism course but at the same time we are trying our level best to shift our entire setup to a new building because of the State Higher Education Department directions to vacate the college building,” said one of the officials.

Sources claimed that the students who had recently enrolled themselves for various graduate/undergraduate/postgraduate programmes were particular about getting assurance from the authorities that their study would not suffer due to this issue.

Meanwhile, KK Bhat, IGNOU Regional Director, Jammu, said, “Yes, the centre is all set to launch the important programme in January next year. We have been intimated by New Delhi to run the programme”.

“As far as the fixation of number of seats for the course is concerned, there is no such restriction. Earlier, the classes for the diploma course in journalism were conducted at the University of Jammu (JU) but now we have Central University of Jammu (CUJ) as another option to organises classes for this Masters Programme,” he added.