2 years of NEP: Amit Shah launches skill initiatives, UGC portal with over 23,000 free courses to go live soon

According to the home minister, NEP 2020 is gaining unprecedented acceptance from the entire nation, which shows that the policy is in sync with the roots of the nation. "It represents the aspirations of our students, teachers and parents," he said.

Meanwhile, the University Grants Commission (UGC) earlier said it will launch over 23,000 higher education courses, including programmes on artificial intelligence (AI), cyber security and early childhood care, free of cost on a new web portal from Friday. The portal is aimed at bridging the digital divide and enhancing the accessibility of higher education in remote parts of the country, it said.

The 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 forthcoming academic session of 2022-23.

The tie-up with the MeitY is done to integrate the e-resources of the ministry, which include roughly 7.5 lakh Common Service Centres (CSCs) and Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs).

These centres, spread across the country, will help the portal reach the maximum number of people and provide the desired benefit to the rural areas of the country. The courses will be offered in Hindi, Tamil, Bangla, Marathi, Gujrati, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada, and English.

M Jagadesh Kumar, UGC chairman explained to PTI that the courses will include 137 SWAYAM MOOC in emerging areas, apart from the 23,000 higher education courses. SWAYAM is India's national MOOC platform. It offers over 2,150 courses taught by close to 1,300 instructors from over 135 Indian universities.

Kumar said, "The CSCs and SPVs are being managed and operated by entrepreneurs who belong to the local community and are referred to as village level entrepreneurs (VLEs)." The VLEs will operate and manage the centres that are honed with computers and internet connectivity.

Although the courses are free, users will have to pay either Rs 20 a day or Rs 500 a month to reimburse the cost of the infrastructure and the efforts of the VLEs.

"This is similar to other government projects like Ayushman Bharat Yojana, PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana, e-Shram, Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan Yojana (PMSYM), and many others," said Kumar.