Punjab Private Digital Open Universities Policy notified
Pvt players can set up institutes
The Education Department has notified the Punjab Private Digital Open Universities Policy, enabling students to complete their degree courses online without the need to attend classes on campus.
Notified by the state Education Department on January 15, the policy allows the private sector to set up digital universities in Punjab. With this, Punjab has become the second state in the country after Kerala to have such a system in place.
Digital universities will have physical campuses, which will be used as headquarters for administrative purposes. No class will be held on the campus. In the notification, High Education Administrative Secretary Anindita Mitra said the broad objective of the policy was “to provide teaching and training in higher education through digital, online, distance or open modes, and to make provisions for research, innovation through technology-enabled systems”.
She said the digital university will offer programmes of study at undergraduate, postgraduate and professional levels through online classes, digital assessments, virtual laboratories and other technology-enabled tools. The interested private players must have five years of credible experience in online teaching and maintain a corpus of at least Rs 20 crore. A processing fee of Rs 5 lakh has to be submitted to the Department of Higher Education, along with the application. Once the approval is received, another Rs 20 lakh has to be paid to the government.
The government has stated that at least 15 per cent of the seats in a digital open university will have to be reserved for Punjab residents. The government will impose penalties up to Rs 25 lakh if any of the University Grants Commission (UGC) or other norms violated by the private players.
