Calicut University authorities are making last-ditch efforts to restore University Grants Commission (UGC) recognition for its School of Distance Education (SDE), which has not been admitting new graduate and postgraduate students for over a year now.
According to sources, one of the reasons for the SDE losing UGC approval was the lack of full-time faculty for the programme. The university had been managing with part-time teachers for preparing study materials and other works. Now, it has been decided to appoint teachers on a three-year contract. They will be relieved for a short period after three years and the contract will be renewed. Another issue was the lack of a full-time director. R. Sethunath, who was with the Department of Hindi, was recently appointed as the head of the SDE. It is learnt that the university officials had also made some technical lapses earlier while uploading the documents required to restore the recognition to the UGC website. Now, the sources said that they have been corrected.
Mr. Sethunath told The Hindu on Monday that the UGC had given university time till July 31 to submit details for restoring its approval. He claimed that a clear picture might emerge within a week after that.
The SDE right now has only those students who had registered before the recognition was lost. With thousands of students waiting to register for graduate and undergraduate courses under this stream, and the Sree Narayana Guru Open University also not getting UGC approval, the authorities recently decided to admit them under the private registration system. July 31 is the last date to apply.
A Syndicate sub-committee that met last week also decided to allow those under private registration to shift to the SDE once the UGC approval is restored. However, with the certificates under the private registration system not recognised by many universities outside the State, students hope that the SDE recognition is restored as early as possible.
