India, Jan. 28 -- The cabinet's approval of the Punjab Private Digital Open Universities Policy, 2026, marks a significant milestone in Indian higher education.

Punjab has become the first state to provide both a comprehensive policy framework and an operational model for fully digital universities. This initiative recognises a critical disconnect: Students obtain formal degrees from traditional colleges while acquiring genuinely employable skills from YouTube, Coursera, and other online platforms. Punjab's digital universities promise to bridge this gap by integrating cutting-edge skills-artificial intelligence, cyber security, cloud computing, data science, and business analytics-directly into degree programmes delivered entirely onlin...