PTU restarts distance education, to confine itself in Punjab

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 18

The Punjab Technical University (PTU) had announced during its convocation last week that it would re-start its distance education programme. But it will now have to keep its work limited to within the state. The decision comes in the wake of the UGC directions to state universities to restrict their area within their respective states.

The programme titled as EDvantage, which is being launched after a gap of two years, has only a limited number of courses. While earlier, there were several professional courses being offered through this module including those on journalism, fashion designing etc, there are now just five courses in the list — BBA, BCA, PGDCA, MBA and MCA. The university has also increased the fee structure of the courses which varies to an average of 10 per cent.

Further, the university has not set up any regional centres as was the system earlier and kept most controls with itself. Instead, it has set up registration centres and study centres, which are located at a distance from one another.

The university has so far set up centres at Amritsar, Ludhiana, Kapurthala, Mohali, Moga, Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur, Bathinda, Patiala and Sangrur. Earlier, the PTU had more than 200 centres across the country, a few even offshores. PTU VC Dr Rajneesh Arora confirmed that there would be no centres outside the state.