NMIMS replaces distance edu courses with online progs after nearly 2 years | Mumbai News

Mumbai: After facing a setback for three admission intakes, Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies‘ (NMIMS) Centre for Distance and Online Education programmes finally started a month ago, but in a new avatar. The category-I deemed-to-be-university decided to replace its distance education programmes with online learning programmes from this year, after complying with UGC norms.
In a public notice last year, UGC had debarred it from offering open, distance learning and online programmes for intakes in Jan-Feb 2023, July-Aug 2023 and Jan-Feb 2024, after the university failed to adhere to regulations. The notice mentioned violations over the functioning of Centre for Internal Quality Assurance, quality of study material and nomenclature, among others. The distance programmes were believed to be one of NMIMS’s huge revenue generators.
After completion of the three cohorts of admissions and fulfilling all shortcomings, NMIMS approached UGC for fresh approval. Meena Chintamaneni, the university’s pro-vice-chancellor, said the permission was eventually granted in Aug. On the decision to offer online programmes, she said, “The management realised there are some limitations to offering distance education programmes as students must come to a centre to take the exam. Technology is our strength. So, we strengthened our technology platform, which is the backbone of online programmes.”
To offer online programmes through portals other than govt’s Swayam, a separate team from Distance Education Bureau’s evaluated NMIMS’s technology platform and gave its nod. The university started the classes a month ago in working executive MBA, MBA, BBA and BCom. Of these, BBA and BCom were offered as online programmes even earlier. Chintamaneni said despite the delayed admission, they managed to get students because of NMIMS’s reputation.
When UGC issued the debarment notice, the university had moved court, following which the commission filed a critical affidavit saying the management failed to take requisite permissions from it to run its off-campus in five locations, the distance and open learning courses were running without its recognition, and the programmes were debarred as a punitive measure. NMIMS now complies with all UGC norms, and all its courses are validated, and its off-campuses in six locations have been approved by the commission.