AU distance education gets DEB approval

Visakhapatnam: The newly appointed Vice Chancellor of the Andhra University, Prof G Nageswara Rao said on Monday that the Distance Education Bureau (DEB) under the University Grants Commission, which looks after the open and distance education institutions in the country, recognised the School of Distance Education of Andhra University to offer 44 courses for the academic years 2016-17 and 2017-18.

Addressing a press conference here, the new VC of the Andhra varsity, who took charge on Sunday said that it is mandatory for all Distance Education and Open Learning institutions to get approval from the DEB for offering various academic programmes in distance mode.

The School of Distance Education, Andhra University applied for recognition of various courses in June this year. The School of Distance Education was started in 1972 with B.A., B.Com. and PUC courses with an enrollment of 265 students. It was the second distance education institute in entire south India after the University of Mysore. The school is a pioneer in this field with more than 60,000 students and 44 study centers as of now.

Prof Rao said that the Distance Education Council came into existence in 1985. Due to enormous growth of distance education institutions in the country, the responsibility of supervising the open and distance education learning system was entrusted to the UGC and the Distance Education Bureau was started in May 2013.