BH Global Education Team
Speaking at IGNOU in Delhi, UGC Chairperson Prof Ved Praksh provided a glimpse of his future vision for the country. He urged to replace the prevalent learning systems with knowledge systems wherein teaching and research are integrated and are not considered as separate activities.
Feeling the need to redefine the educational needs he said that it is only the mechanism which separates distance and conventional education. However, if we want to transit from developing to developed nations then the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) must be increased.
He brought forward the present educational scenario in the country wherein 20 million learners are pursuing education through conventional system and 4.6 million through distance mode. According to him, IGNOU shares 90 percent of the figure. “We would like to increase the enrolment from 20 to 30 million in conventional system and 4.6 million to 6.6 million in distance mode of education. It is only then we can say that we have arrived at 30 percent GER,” he emphatically added.
Realizing that GER is just one of the parameters he said that we have to induct these 36.6 million students to their streams by creating opportunities in cognizance with the accelerated change. Prof. M. Aslam, Vice Chancellor, IGNOU, in his presidential address brought forward the need to overcome the barriers that have been created between the conventional and distance education system which are in fact complementary to each other.