Distance education prog under scanner

Updated on: Friday, November 11, 2011

With the recent scam in one of the study centres attached to Institute of Distance Education in Dubai belonging to University of Madras and the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) pulling up Anna University, Chennai for conducting postgraduate (PG) courses such as MBA, MCA and MSc (IT) under the distance education mode without getting the mandatory approval from Distance Education Council (DEC) academicians say time has come for government to review distance education system in the country.

Academicians also say that distance education system has become a commercial tool for both government and private universities to earn money, as it has no restriction for admission of students, besides lack of proper monitoring system.

Former Anna University vice-chancellor Prof. A. Kalanidhi blamed union government for the chaos in distance education as it failed to allot necessary funds for higher education.

“As the government is not able to fund its own universities and private ones it let loose all of them to start distance education centres and generate their funds. This led to commercialisation of distance education system, which was once started with an objective to take education to the unreachable”, he said.

He pointed out that until union government comes out with some kind of proper mechanism to regulate and control the commercialisation of distance education this chaotic situation would continue to prevail.

Distance education prog under scanner

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