Telangana Districts to get IGNOU centers

Hyderabad, April 29: The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) vice-chancellor Prof Ravindra Kumar has concluding session of the All India Vice-Chancellor's Conference here on Friday

The university would add about 100 new courses in the next couple of months to the existing 232 programs of 60 areas currently being offered by the university.

"There is the wrong perception among the people that distance learning is an alternative way of learning. But it is a parallel method of conventional learning. The open universities are not compromising on the quality of education," Ravindra Kumar said.

Ravindra Kumar told media that the university had already been providing services in the digital mode right from filling up online application, payment of fees to providing material to Prof Ravin and would reach 100% digital in the coming years.

"Every year, 10 lakh new students are being added in the open universities in the country. The only way of reaching them easily and speedily is through digital mode. The Centre had allotted five channels of IGNOU, of which four channels have already been launched for imparting education to the students," the vice chancellor said.

The university has already set up Electronics Media Centre for taking digital and visual to the students.

On expanding services in Telangana through study centers, he said all the 31 districts would have study centers in near future as only 10 districts have study centers now. There is no truth to the fact that distance mode courses were helpful for certain courses.

"Our Ph.D. programs were a huge hit with about 15,000 applied for the courses. But Ph.D. is a regular course not distance mode of research," the vice-chancellor said.