DU open learning students protest mention of mode of learning

Scores of students of DU's School of Open Learning (SOL) today staged a protest outside the UGC office against the commission's directive to the varsity to specify the mode of learning on the degrees awarded by it.
Terming it to be "devaluation" of their degrees, the students demanded that the University Grants Commission (UGC) rollback the decision.
UGC had issued guidelines to make mentioning of "Mode of Delivery" compulsory on documents issued to correspondence students, including their degrees.
This, according to UGC has been done "in order to erase ambiguities between conventional mode degrees and ODL mode degrees.
"Those pursuing correspondence courses in different open universities across the country come from disadvantaged and marginalized sections of society," said Harish Gautam, member of Krantikari Yuva Sangathan, an association of SOL students.

"Such a decision would further decrease their already dismal chances of getting good jobs or admissions in regular post-graduate courses of different universities, since mentioning mode of delivery would mean that their degrees will be treated inferior to those pursued through regular mode," he added.
The protesting students submitted a memorandum to UGC officials demanding immediate annulment of the UGC guideline so as to bring parity between ODL courses and regular courses.