BU to close down franchisee education centres

Bharathiar University has decided to withdraw the Centre for Participatory Programmes and Centre for Online Programmes starting the 2018-19 academic year and will ask franchisee centres that have been offering the programmes to make no new admission.

The University announced its decision at its Syndicate meeting that was held here on Friday in the presence of Higher Education Secretary Sunil Paliwal.

The sources said that the University’s decision followed the University Grants Commission regulations that took a serious view of such programmes.

This would mean that franchisee centres within the State would also have to wind up operations.

The University had been running the programmes through franchisee centres much to the consternation of the affiliated, private colleges that had been complaining about how the University had been offering courses it was not supposed to and how the centres with very poor infrastructure were making a mockery of the rules.

Following the decision, the University also held a meeting with management representatives and principals of affiliated, private colleges to explore the possibility of the colleges opening learning support centres to run distance education courses.

But the principals and management representatives rejected the offer saying that the University was trying to circumvent the UGC rules that said that the University could not offer distance education courses on account of its poor ranking. To this, Mr. Paliwal said that the Bharathiar University had been trying to get the UGC to relax the rules, the sources said.