Maharashtra has a long and rich tradition of educational reforms. Mahatma Jyotiba Phule, Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, Bhaurao Patil, Swami Ramanand Teerth and other great thinkers and reformers have contributed to educational philosophy and movement in the state. It was therefore appropriate that the state realized the need of an open university, The university was established on 1st July, 1989 through Act XX of 1989 of the Maharashtra State Legislature, justly named after Yashwantrao Chavan, Maharashtra’s great political leader and builder of modern Maharashtra.

Due to statutory powers conferred by an act XX (1989) of Maharashtra state legislature and the recognition by the ‘University Grants Commission of India’, this university is fully empowered to award various academic certifications like certificates, diplomas, and graduate, post-graduate, doctoral degrees. This university also takes all precautions, at all programme stages from ‘Curriculum Design’ to ‘Examination’, to ensure that the standards and quality of, education and examinations are preserved. The curriculum of these programmes is designed for Equivalence, with respective similar academic programmes, offered by other statutory universities of various states.University also provides many different diploma or certificates, which may or may not be equivalent to any other such certificates. These certificates will motivate students for self-study, as their learning efforts will be recognized by the university after short duration. These certificates will be provided only when, student requests for it along with attested photocopies of Mark-Sheets confirming successful completion of the required courses in end examination. No convocation shall be necessary for issue of these certificates. All architecture graduate and post-graduate programmes are duly recognized and approved by the “Council of Architecture (CoA)”. Hence, after successful completion of the graduate degree programme (that is, B.Arch.), student can register with the “Council of Architecture (CoA)”. Student shall be entitled to practice as an architect after such registration. For all engineering diploma and degree programmes, where equivalence status is not explicitly mentioned, university has already initiated recognition and equivalence procedures, with appropriate authorities like “Board of Technical Education” or “All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)”. University will publish the results of these recognition and equivalence procedures on the official web site, as and when they are available. All these degree and post-graduate degree programmes are duly recognized and approved by the ‘University Grant Commission (UGC)’. Hence, these programmes are equivalent to the respective programmes offered by any other statutory university in India, for the purpose of employment, promotion and further education. In this respect, the status of this university is at par with all other statutory universities of India.