The University Grants Commission (UGC) has released an official notification instructing vice-chancellors of colleges and univerities to prepare a database of international students studying in their institutions. The commission has asked the higher educational institutions (HEIs) to provide data of information of all international students studying in India, including the details of alumni, on an urgent basis.

“All the Universities are requested to provide the data of students from the graduate level onwards in the attached format via e-mail to [email protected] positively by September 15, 2021,” the official statement reads.

UGC has earlier asked the universities and colleges to prepare a calendar of events and organise regular competitions, hackathons, workshops, seminars on cyber security/ cybercrimes on their respective campuses. UGC has asked them to conduct all the events at regular intervals to strengthen cyber security. The varsities and colleges are instructed to organise these events with adherence to COVID-19 protocols and social distancing norms.

These steps are taken to tackle the unforeseen challenges of cybercrime and develop an ecosystem for cyber security in HEIs. Earlier this year in February, the commission had urged the HEIs to arrange workshops and events for the same to strengthen cyber security and prepare youths.

Meanwhile, the commission has allowed several universities, colleges and institutes to offer online distance learning courses keeping the post-Covid-19 challenges in mind. The UGC has decided to start 123 different online programmes, out of which 40 are postgraduate programmes and 83 are undergraduate programmes through SWAYAM or Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds.

The students learning through SWAYAM will have to appear for the examinations conducted by the national testing agency (NTA) at various centres across the country. As per the official statement, the examinations for non-technical UG and PG courses of the January-April 2021 session were scheduled to be conducted on August 28 and 29.

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