UGC scraps These Healthcare Courses under Distance Mode of Education

UGC scraps healthcare courses offered under National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) Act, 2021, through distance or online mode. Courses like Psychology, Microbiology, Food and Nutrition Science, etc. are some of these courses.

UGC Scraps These Healthcare Courses: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has mandated a sweeping ban on healthcare and allied courses offered through Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and online modes, effective from the July-August 2025 academic session. This directive is specific and applies to disciplines governed by the National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions (NCAHP) Act, 2021. Courses such as Psychology, Microbiology, Food and Nutrition Science, Biotechnology, Clinical Nutrition, and Dietetics are directly impacted by this ban. The decision, from UGC’s 592nd meeting on July 23, 2025, enforces immediate withdrawal of recognition for these programmes, forcing higher education institutions to discontinue admissions to the specified courses from the 2025-26 session onwards.

This decision was made after a meeting of the Distance Education Bureau in April 2025. If a degree has different subjects (for example, a BA with many majors), only the health-related subjects, like Psychology, will no longer be allowed in distance or online courses. The other, non-health subjects (such as English, History, or Political Science) will not be affected. Also, if a university in India offers degrees through tie-ups with foreign universities without clear permission from UGC, those degrees will not be valid in India.

The UGC (University Grants Commission) is becoming stricter about healthcare education to make sure the quality is good and the rules are the same everywhere. It has clearly said that online healthcare degree courses will not be valid in India anymore. This decision also includes programmes run without approval or in tie-up with foreign universities. This comes at a time when new rules under the NCAHP Act are being brought in to make healthcare education more carefully checked and better controlled. Courses like allied health sciences, psychology, and biotechnology, which many students earlier studied through distance or online learning, will now have to be done in regular classrooms.

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