AP govt signs MoU with Carnegie Mellon University For PG programme in IT 

Hyderabad students to get MSIT dergees
Carnegie Mellon University issues degrees 
All state varsities to have tie up with foreign varsities

                      Andhra Pradesh Government has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) which will bring together leading global and Indian university into a consortium to introduce an "innovative, multi-university interdisciplinary post-graduate programme" in Information Technology. The MoU was signed by Prof.C.Subba Rao, Chairman of A.P.State Council of Higher Education and Prof.Raj Reddy of CMU in the presence of the Chief Minister Mr.N.Chandrababu Naidu. To begin with a pilot programme would be taken up in a few university centre in Hyderabad and within two to three years, it would grow two to three years, it would grow to a large number of centres to cover 10,000 post-graduates students. The American university had agreed to collaborate in the design and implementation of the multi-university programme, offer its courses and faculty resources and co-sign the degree to be awarded at the end of the programme. The Master of Science in Information Technology(MIST),as the post-graduate course would be known,would be a combination of courses in IT,discipline of courses and courses related to software skills along with high emphasis on the project. 
                     Designed to meet international quality standards,this multi-university programme would use sophisticated distance education methodologies, combining a traditional Gurukul approach with unique strengths and capabilities of several international and Indian Universities. It would be delivered through well equipped electronic classrooms housed in the finest IT and engineering institutions. A center for Distance learning would be set up by the consortium of universities in act as a nodal agency for offering this programme.
                     The Government had earlier constituted an IT Education Coordination Committee with leaders from the IT industry and experts in IT education, under the chairmanship of Prof.Raj Reddy,to give shape to this major initiative. This committee had taken the initiative to evolve a framework for courses to be sourced from leading universities and institutions and combined in an innovative manner with each university that ensuring that its norms for courses/components distributed by it were met.

-October' 00