The University of Calicut is expected to start admission process to 18 courses under the School of Distance Education soon.
This follows an order from the Kerala High Court on Thursday. A case had been filed in the court against the lack of permission from the State government for both the University of Kerala and the University of Calicut to run courses for which the Sreenarayana Guru Open University had not sought approval.
Earlier, the university had the permission to run 25 courses. Now, seven language courses have been excluded from the list.
According to Syndicate sources, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has asked the university to file a report by November 15 after calling for applications to the distance education courses. Earlier, the university was asked to submit the report by October 31. The authorities were thus planning to start the admission process for the nine courses that the government had permitted it to run. With the court now permitting admissions to nine more courses, admission notification is likely to be issued for all of them in the coming days.
Meanwhile, Ugin Morely, chairperson of the Syndicate standing committee on distance education, said on Thursday that efforts were on to start at least 10 online undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Classes could start by January next year. Discussions are on to decide the digital platform to be used for the purpose. The university is also making efforts to get government permission to start branch campuses abroad.
