The students deserve better, as in most conventional universities. It can only work to the detriment of learning if the Indira Gandhi National Open University can ignite a controversy between institutions that offer the course ~ albeit unconventional ~ and the University Grants Commission, the regulatory authority.

The terms of engagement ought to have been finalised much earlier, at any rate before the Ignou authorites announced that MBA and MCA courses were on the anvil in the open distance-learning mode.

Reports suggest that the UGC has taken umbrage to the unilateral announcement, asserting that the overarching authority’s approval was mandatory before initiating a new course.

From the perspective of career options, both the new courses are important, and the Ignou faculties have defended their stand on the strength of a Supreme Court order ~ “The Supreme Court has held that a university set up by a law of Parliament or a state legislature is not required to take AICTE approval, but should follow the minimum standards set by the regulator.”

The certitudes, therefore, need not be a matter of subjective reflection. It is pretty obvious that the record of the increasingly popular Ignou centres has not been sufficiently evaluated, indeed to qualify for the introduction of new courses.

Do they possess the wherewithal to instruct the students on highly professional disciplines? On closer reflection, the UGC is perfectly entitled to take a call on the fundamentals, and the issue lends no scope for punctured egos in the institutions that offer Ignou courses.

A Supreme Court judgment on 30 July had made it explicit that Ignou was not required to take UGC approval to offer BTech courses, although it is mandatory to follow “quality norms” set by the regulator.

The Ignou centres cannot, therefore, accord short shrift to the essential prerequisite of quality. The clause requiring institutions to take the approval of UGC for Open Distance Learning programmes was notified in June 2017, and has thus far been unchallenged.

Not wholly unrelated to the raging controversy ~ at the cost of learning ~ has been the exclusion of four universities in West Bengal from the UGC’s list of institutions that are eligible to introduce Open Learning.

The four universities whose performance has been below the benchmark are Rabindra-Bharati, Kalyani, Vidyasagar, and North Bengal universities. It is rather surprising that Kalyani and North Bengal have not been able to make the grade in terms of the Open Learning scheme.

The issue has thrown up the larger controversy over whether the multiplicity of universities in the state has been in step with advancement of learning and the quality of instruction, not to forget the lack of suitable infrastructure. It is one thing to boast a bevy of universities; quite another to ensure that they measure up to the criteria.