Baishali Mukherjee

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently published a list of 21 fake universities and has advised students and parents to be more cautious when enrolling in any institution for higher education. Several of the institutions on this list claim to offer degrees in specific subjects, but they are not registered under the University Grants Commission. These institutions often entice students to enroll in degree courses across various streams, but due to their lack of registration, the degrees offered by them will be considered as fake leading to problems in the students’ careers later. According to UGC regulations, these institutions do not meet the academic and infrastructural standards. These universities also operate under deceptive names which create confusion amongst students and parents.

Moreover, these fake universities operate without any control, leading to a waste of students’ time and money. Therefore, the UGC has urged students to check all the information on the institution’s website and verify its accreditation before enrolling. The UGC also emphasized that only the universities registered under the UGC Act of 1956 have the right to grant degrees in India.

Among the 21 institutions listed as fake by UGC, most i.e. eight are from Delhi. These include AIIPHS Government University, Commercial University Ltd, United Nations University, Vocational University, ADR-Centric Juridical University, IISE, Viswakarma Open University for Self-Employment and  Adhyatmik Vishwavidyalaya. Four such universities are from UP, including Gandhi Hindi Vidyapith, Prayag, Allahabad,  Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose University, Aligarh, Bhartiya Shiksha Parishad, Lucknow and Mahamaya Technical University, Noida. Among the others, two including Christ New Testament Deemed University, Guntur and Bible Open University of India, Vizag are from Andhra Pradesh, St. John’s University and IIUPM, Kozhikode are from Kerala, Badaganvi Sarkar World Open University, Belgaum, is from Karnataka, Raja Arabic University, Nagpur, is from Maharashtra, Sree Bodhi Academy of Higher Education, is from Puducherry, and two including Indian Institute of Alternative Medicine, Kolkata and  Institute of Alternative Medicine and Research, Kolkata are from West Bengal.