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Over 23,000 Higher Education Courses to Be Made Available for Free on New Portal: UGC

:- Nearly 2.5 lakh CSCs and SPVs are operating in gram panchayats and more than 5 lakh CSCs/SPVs centres are functional across the country

 

By Avantika Sharma

New Delhi: UGC has tied up with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) to integrate the e-resources with their over 7.5 lakh Common Service Centres (CSC) and Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) Centres to offer these courses from the upcoming academic session of 2022-23.

Over 23,000 higher education courses, including programmes on artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security and early childhood care, will now be available free of cost on a new web portal from Friday, the University Grants Commission (UGC) has said.

The portal is intended to enhance the accessibility of higher education in remote parts of the country. “As part of its efforts in making higher education accessible to all, the UGC has been constantly working in making digital resources available to students in English as well as regional languages,” UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar said on Thursday. The CSCs aim is to provide digital access and make e-governance services available to the citizens especially those who are living in rural India.

It will be launched today as part of the second anniversary of the National Education Policy-2020.

Nearly 2.5 lakh CSCs and SPVs are operating in gram panchayats and more than 5 lakh CSCs/SPVs centres are functional across the country.

Village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) operate the centres to earn their living by delivering online services. These centres are said to have computers and internet connectivity

The courses include 23,000 postgraduate courses, 137 SWAYAM MOOC courses in emerging areas and 25 non-engineering SWAYAM courses. There are no charges for accessing these on the UGC portal.

“All courses are free. However, for availing the services and infrastructure of CSC/ SVP, a user has to pay a fee of Rs 20 per day or Rs 500 per month to reimburse the VLEs efforts and cost of their infrastructure.

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