New Delhi: National Digital University announced ThePrint has learned that the 2022 budget will become a reality from the next academic session.
In her budget speech last year, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the setting up of the National Digital University, which is seen as an important step Towards better employability and achieving 50 percent Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in higher education by 2030 as envisaged in the National Education Policy 2020 of the Central Government.
Speaking to ThePrint, UGC chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar said that the National Digital University (NDU) will start offering the course by July 2023.
He said the university would start with offering certificate and diploma courses and eventually move on to degree programmes.
“A digital university will be set up to provide access to world-class quality universal education to students across the country,” Sitharaman said. Told In his budget speech last year.
He said that this program would be available in various Indian languages.
“The university will be built on a networked hub-spoke model, with the hub building state-of-the-art ICT expertise. The best public universities and institutions in the country will collaborate to form a network of hub spokes,” Sitharaman said.
Education ministry sources said since then several rounds of discussions have taken place between the central government and educational institutions across the country, including the elite Indian Institutes of Technology.
‘Hub-and-spokes’: how NDU will work
A UGC source told ThePrint that the central government has finally come out with a plan on how the university will function.
The current plan sees the central government’s massive open online course (MOOC) platform itself as the center – “hub” – of the NDU programme, the source said.
SWAYAM, which is an acronym for Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds launched The Union Ministry of Education attempted to democratize education in 2017 by making a variety of courses available free of cost to students across the country.
Under the current plan of NDU, SWAYAM will host courses and be linked to various universities and colleges – “The Spokes”.
The source said that a university that wants to offer its courses at NDU will do so on the platform. Students can either choose to get their degree from the university or from NDU.
For example, a student who opts for a course offered by Delhi University and obtains the requisite credits can opt for either a DU or NDU degree, the source said, adding the finer details of the scheme, such as fees And the admission process, is still being worked out.
‘One Class, One TV Channel’
Despite the government’s plans to push NDUs, the status of the second big announcement for education in Budget 2022 – the extension of the Modi government’s ‘One Class, One TV Channel programme’ is still unclear.
First announced in 2021 under PM e-Vidya – Digital Education Program of Central Government – ‘One Class, One TV Channel’ envisages imparting education using television programmes.
In the 2022 budget, Sitharaman had announced that the government is increasing the number of DTH channels from 12 to 200 under the scheme.
“We recognize the need to provide supplementary teaching and create a flexible mechanism for education delivery,” Sitharaman had said in her budget speech. “For this purpose, PM eVidya’s ‘One Class, One TV Channel’ program will be expanded from 12 to 200 TV channels. This will enable all states to provide supplementary education in regional languages for classes 1-12.
However, the website of the Ministry of Education shows that it yet to be implemented,
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)