Vice-Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and Chairman of its Distance Education Council Professor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai felt that it was high time the Union and State governments stepped into action to standardise the quality of courses offered in the distance education (DE) mode by various institutes across the country.
He told The Hindu that “the first thing any private university does soon after attaining the Deemed University status is to start a distance education wing.”
According to him, in India, one national university, IGNOU, 13 open universities and 100 State and private-run universities cater to the educational needs of 22 per cent of the collegiate and higher education populace in the country through DE and the Open University mode.
This is a sizable share of the mere 10 per cent population who has access to higher education, he added, as he expressed the need for maintaining a good standard of education to those students and putting an end to degrading the term ‘Distance Education' by exploiting their students.
However Prof. Pillai strictly ruled out that DE on the whole had not lost its flavour and demand as universities that maintain quality are, however, still in good demand despite the malpractices of faulty varsities.
Citing the example of IGNOU, he said that admissions had been on the rise year after year with a tremendous increase last year.
“At present, more than 32 lakh students are pursuing their graduate, certificate and research programmes in the world's largest university (IGNOU),” he said.
The university's annual convocation that would be held in a month's time will witness the world's largest convocation where nearly 2.2 lakh persons would receive their degree certificates, he added.
The Vice-Chancellor opined that DE as wrongly assumed by many people is not for dull students or school dropouts to acquire a degree, because many college and university toppers who are placed in white collar jobs join DE courses to get higher qualifications and keep themselves updated in their field of study.
While flexible education to cater to the needs of persons who cannot undergo formal education within the walls of the classrooms is the motive of DE, institutes offering courses through this mode should focus on a variety of degree and certificate programmes that are not available in the regular mode, he suggested.
At this juncture, he said that efforts taken by IGNOU to reach special category of students such as prison inmates and sex workers over the recent years had attracted tremendous response.
He pointed out that DE institutes have a greater role in helping the government to realise its plan to increase the Gross Enrollment Ration for higher education from the present 10 per cent to 15 per cent in 2015. And without quality, it would be highly impossible, he reiterated.
