Open universities

India's Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in New Delhi in 1987. It is mandated to serve students from all cultural, ethnic and socio-cultural backgrounds across this vast developing country of 26 states, 1652 languages and 190 religions. It has a network of 268 study centers, 80 work centers and 17 regional centers. In 1997, it had an enrollment of 393,388. an annual intake of 95,000. and a total enrollment surpassing 3.9 million. IGNOU also serves as the apex body for India's 7 state open universities and 52 correspondence course institutes, a role it performs through a Distance Education Council.

Asia's other open universities have smaller enrollments. India has 7 state open universities: in chronological order of establishment, the Dr B. R. Ambedkar Open University, Hyderabad (1982), Kota Open Universitv (1987), Nalanda Open University (1987), Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University (1989), M. P. Bhoj University (1992), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University, Ahmedabad, (1994), and Karnataka State Open University (1996).

Dual mode

In India, 52 conventional universities have correspondence course institutes which are gradually being upgraded into fully-fledged distance education centers. These institutes and the 8 open universities account for more than 5 of the 61 million students enrolled in higher education in India.

Outcomes

Such low persistence rates are attributable to a variety of factors: greater variability in entry ability, the demands of off-campus study, the costs of study to the students and/or poor teaching and logistics. On the first point, it is important to note that many Asian students, whether or not they, have the capacity for self-directed learning, have to opt for distance learning as a matter of necessity and not, as in western countries. as a matter of choice. On the second point, many institutions are required to be wholly or largelv self-funding and as a result, the students, many from low income groups, not only have to pay fees but in some cases, contribute a higher proportion of the teaching costs than their more privileged counterparts in conventional universities. Some institutions, for example, India's correspondence course institutes are poorly resourced and managed and provide faculty with little training or motivation for the work. As a consequence, their students frequently complain of delays in delivery and assignments returned without comment (Polu, 1997; Ramanujam,1997).

Audiences reached

The Indian open universities are still struggling to fulfill their intended positive interventionist roles in regard to patriarchal ideologies and cultural marginalization. Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Dr B. R. Ambedkar Open University enrollments are still predominately urban, male and middle class (Pandey, 1995; Polu, 1997). These institutions cannot be held wholly accountable for this. The disparities caused by language, religion, caste, creed, gender stereotyping and other socio-cultural factors particular to India are barriers to access and equity to be addressed through multilateral action, not simply open and distance education.

Culture

Self-directed learning predates the establishment of the open and dual-mode universities in Asia. In the early years of the century, Rabindra Nath Tagore, one of India's Nobel Laureates, conceived a system of home-based study and examinations outside geographical boundaries of the universities (Mukherjee, 1997), and correspondence education has long been provided by many universities across the region. However, institutions such as the Indira Gandhi National Open University, Bangladesh Open University, Universitas Terbuka and Korea National Open University have largely drawn their inspiration from the west, particularly from the UK Open University.

Ramanujam (1997) suggests that many of the problems experienced in introducing open and distance learning into countries such as India result from blindly copying western models which are neither fully understood nor in accord with the traditional indigenous notions of education. The financial, organizational, curricular, pedagogical, logistical and performance improvement ramifications of open learning may fit with westernized education systems, as in Hong Kong, but the poor performance of some other universities suggests a weak grasp of the policies, procedures, expertise and resources required

Course development

Comprehensive study center provision is however, expensive and difficult to achieve. This is particularly so in the remoter regions of large developing countries such as India where few of the dual-mode universities have study centers and even the Indira Gandhi National Open University's 268 study centers, 80 work centers and 17 regional centers only work out at one study center per 4 million people. There can also be problems in recruiting and training local tutors/counselors for these centers. These are typically part-time staff and without adequate induction and training, they may lack the experience, knowledge and sensitivity to meet the students' needs (Gandhe, 1995; Reddy, 1995).

Faculty development

Faculty development entails far more than providing limited and episodic workshops and then leaving faculty to cope. It requires an integrated strategy of management support, training and retraining, peer interaction,. continuous performance improvement and compensation and rewards. Such a strategy has been developed by the Indira Gandhi National Open University. Soon after its inception IGNOU developed a human resource development plan addressing the short-term orientation. medium-term training, and long-term needs of administrators, academics, and support staff. The University subsequently established a Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE) -which now not only serves the institution but distance teaching universities throughout South Asia. To further motivate faculty, STRIDE has also developed postgraduate diploma and masters programs in distance education. In 1995 with partial funding from the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, the University and the Commonwealth of Learning launched a scheme whereby these programs could be studied. free of charge, by 100 distance educators in 14 developing countries through a mix of distance education and in-country tutorials. In 1998, about 50 students graduated through this scheme. Unfortunately, in some other Indian contexts, politicians. planners and senior managers have been carried away by success stories of open and distance learning overseas and have totally failed to comprehend the levels of professionalism and faculty, development required for such undertakings (Koul, 1998),

References

Polu, S. (1997). Distance education in higher education in India: Some concerns. In CD-ROM Conference Papers of The New Learning Environment: A Global Perspective, the 18th ICDE World Conference. Pennsylvania State University, USA, June 2-6.

Ramanujam, P. R. (I 997). Distance education in the 21th century: Implications for developing countries. In CD-ROM Conference Papers of The New Learning Environment: A Global Perspective, the 18th ICDE World Conference. Pennsylvania State University, USA, June 26.

Reddy, V. (1995). The practice of distance education in single mode and dual-mode institutions in India: Issues of convergence and integration. Proceedings of the Asian Association of Open Universities 9th Annual Conference Globalized and Cooperative Distance Learning, December 3-5, Taipei: Taiwan. 37-46.