BDU plans tie-up with BHEL, launching of new distance courses

In a welcome news for students, Centre for Distance Education (CDE) of Bharathidasan University (BDU) has planned to collaborate with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) in a bid to offer a few new distance education courses.
The CDE will also introduce multiple new programmes, mostly skill-based, for distance education from the next academic year. The main reason for planning to introduce these courses is to develop useful skills among people, BDU vice-chancellor P Manisankar said.
He said that the decision was made keeping in mind Centre’s make-in-India movement. “We have planned to introduce several courses and once the syndicate members give their nod, the syllabus would be prepared and made available in the forth-coming year,” he told TOI.
Speaking on the collaboration, he said that the initial talks have already underway for the same. “The initial talks have already begun. BHEL, Trichy, has several facilities which the students can benefit from,” he said.


A total of 35 new distance education courses, including 13 undergraduate courses and 22 postgraduate course,s are likely to be added in the next academic year. The programmes will be on various fields, including textile, biosciences and mechanical design.
Manisankar said that the courses were selected keeping in mind the facilities available in the university. “The laboratories of many departments, including the biosciences, are advanced and we want the students to use it efficiently,” he said.
Last month, TOI had reported that BDU had plans of major revamp at CDE in administration and introduction of new courses. The top officials of the administration claimed that it was looking for “all possible opportunities for revenue generation in a genuine way”.
A senior official from the university had then said: “We are planning to start industry oriented courses as we wish to lay emphasis on the benefit of engineering students.” A few inside sources had said that the demand for pursuing distance education has been down over the past few years and the introduction of the new courses might help in its revival.

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