Distance Education Under Threat

by Sadhan Mukherjee

Our national policy is to help educate India’s youth deprived of higher education but it begs to be fulfilled. The Distance Education (DE) mode is a way out, but it is currently under threat. Why?

It cannot be overstated that shortsighted bureaucrats and vested interests are thwarting the DE efforts. There is hardly any public outcry as many people are still not aware of this form of education. If at all, they perceive it akin to a correspondence course (CC). The media by and large ignores DE except for occasional reports on the wrongs done. There is no informed discussion.

DE is not a CC where home delivery of reading material is provided for study to pass an exam. DE means choosing one’s higher education without being in a regular brick and mortar university or college campus. It works through learning centres with both face-to-face guidance as well as 24x7 online learning facility linked to the university site and its electronic library. In some cases, the DE exams are conducted by universities on line facilitating quick results.

DE is a very popular form of higher education abroad. The University of London pioneered this form in 1858 while in India Delhi University started the first CC in 1962. In the USA, about 20 per cent of all undergraduates had joined DE in 2007-08, according to the US Department of Education, National Centre for Education Statistics (2011). The current percentage is estimated to be around 25 per cent.

According to Dr Geoff Potter of Victoria University, Canada, who did a comparative study on the subject with special reference to China, there were about two million students in DE in the USA, 7.5 lakhs in the UK, 6.5 lakhs in France and two lakhs in Canada as against eight lakhs in China in 2002.

For a long time, barely one per cent of the Chinese people were in higher education. Like in India, education did not reach the masses there. China started CC in 1950 but printed materials were in short supply. That began to change from the late seventies. In 1979 the Central Radio and TV University was set up followed by state Television Universities (TVUs) and the electronic mode of Distance Education became the vehicle of change. The system was to study in groups in classrooms with teachers being available for clarification while the curriculum was delivered through electronic means.

This further changed with the establishment of the CERNET, Chinese Educational and Research Network, with Advanced Distance Learning using high-tech systems. This free and is run by the Central Government. Of China’s 154 major universities, as many as 100 were immediately linked to the CERNET and soon all universities, higher education institutes and all schools up to primary level will be linked to the CERNET, most likely by 2015.

In India, roughly 25 per cent of India’s student community is getting higher education through the DE mode. But unlike in foreign countries, there are too many regulators for DE in India. These are the Distance Education Council (DEC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and University Grants Commission (UGC). They all want to assert their “control” over DE and thereby initiated a turf war.

There is no parliamentary legislation for DE with all-India application and this has given the so-called regulatory authorities the leeway to do what they are doing.

The bureaucratic stranglehold on DE started in full measure around 2007. Some State governments thought DE was a lucrative proposition and well-known universities from other States should be prevented from operating in their States. The UGC also felt that with the enormous scope of DE, universities will be less and less dependent on its “grants”. The UGC-AICTE-DEC then decided to coordinate their attack on DE and on May 11, 2007 set up a Joint Committee to control DE. This body had neither legislative nor an executive authority but it began to rule the roost.

In 2009, the UP Government fired the first shot, so to say. It directed District Magistrates to close down study centres of various universities in the State. A whole lot of study centres filed a series of writ petitions in the Allahabad High Court (WP 52153/2009 and ors). The High Court, in a judgment on October 11, 2009, stayed the State Government’s move and held that it had no authority to close or seal any study centre of other universities. If it had any objection, it should approach the UGC.

The MP Government also, by virtue of its universities adhiniyam, prohibited the operations of study centres of universities located outside the State. Several study centres filed a writ petition in the Madhya Pradesh High Court (WP 2832/2011 and ors). The High Court, in a judgment on September 13, 2011, set aside the MP Government’s order. The government has since filed an appeal in the Supreme Court which is pending.

It may be recalled that the Indira Gandhi Open University (IGNOU) was set up as a Central University by a parliamentary Act in 1985. The DEC was brought into being by the IGNOU under statute 28 of the IGNOU Act for overseeing its DE system and then enlarged its ambit to approve all Distance Education courses including those of autonomous universities. The DEC arrogated to itself powers that in reality it did not have. There is no specific parliamentary Act giving it that authority. This led to a conflict of interest between the IGNOU and other universities.

The DEC continued to hold the upper hand over all universities running DE courses. So much so that without the DE’s approval, a DE student with a valid degree from a university running DE programmes could not even get employment in the Central Government. Also the DEC started a bureaucratic game of delaying approvals of the DE system of various univer-sities, and even claimed that such approvals must have the so-called Joint Committee’s approval.

It had to come to a boil. When negotiations failed to move the bureaucrats and educrats, several universities went to the court.

The Supreme Court, in a very well-considered judgment on April 25, 2013, has clipped the wings of the AICTE pointing out that though MCA is a technical subject, such courses under universities do not come under the control of the AICTE and at best the AICTE’s role can be only advisory. MBA certainly is not a technical subject and the AICTE has nothing to do with that course. The AICTE had suddenly claimed suzerainty over these two courses. What is even more important, the Supreme Court in its judgment held that the so-called regulation introduced by the AICTE in the AICTE Act was vitiated as the AICTE did not get its regulations approved by Parliament.

The AICTE had earlier lost control over universities as these were clearly held to be autonomous by a 2001 verdict of the Supreme Court in the Bharathidasan University case. It also held that bodies like the AICTE and UGC only have an advisory role, and their steps do not enjoy legislative sanction. Now it is reported that an Ordinance is being contemplated to undo the latest AICTE judgment of the Supreme Court and the UGC has directed all universities to refrain from affiliating any new management or technical institutes.

The authority of the IGNOU through the DEC was ab initio wrong. How could one university exercise authority over another university? This is a pertinent point the Madhava Menon Committee appointed by the Ministry of HRD brought out. The Ministry of HRD by and large accepted the Madhava Menon Committee report and opted for a stop-gap arrangement to remove the DEC from the IGNOU. In December 2012, it directed the IGNOU to abolish the DEC and asked the UGC and AICTE to take over the functions of the DEC. The IGNOU has since done so.

The UGC has now taken over the functions of the DEC, again without any legislative sanction. By an executive order an existing Act of Parliament cannot be modified.

In a public notice no. F.27-1/2012 (CPP-II), the UGC has mandated that a Central or State Government university can conduct courses through its own departments, its constituent colleges and/or through its affiliated colleges, while a university established by or under a State Act shall operate only within its territorial jurisdiction allotted to it under its Act and in no case beyond the territory of the State of its location.

This is legally not tenable as the Madras High Court, in a judgment on March 12, 2013 in writ petition no. 30039 of 2012 and MP nos. 2 and 3 of 2012 (Annamalai University vs Union of India and others), has rejected the plea of territorial jurisdiction in distance education imposed by the UGC and others.

On July 19, the Sikkim High Court (WP 04/2012), which had stayed on February 22, 2013 the DEC directive on territorial jurisdiction and admission to the Sikkim Manipal University (SMU) Distance Education, admitted an interlocutory petition of the SMU and directed the UGC also to abide by that order.

Despite bureaucratic hurdles, the DE system in India has grown from roughly a thousand students in 1962 to nearly 3.7 million in 2009-10, as against about 13.7 million in the regular mode, the year for which data is available. This body of students in the DE mode forms a big part of India’s growing professional and skilled workforce. This is why nearly over 100 universities have opened up DE to cater to these prospective students.

The bureaucrats in the regulatory framework want to decide the course of India’s education in an elitist direction and the Ministers in the HRD Ministry seem to be acquiescing. This triumvirate—the UGC, AICTE and DEC—has so far done nothing worthwhile to spread education to our needy people except to block it at every stage. This again is a typical example of our multimodal governance where nothing gets done and everything gets bogged down in red tape.

With almost one-and-a-half crore students currently studying in the DE mode through about 5000 centres attached to various universities and institutions, the all-India picture of DE is an encouraging one. There are varied estimates of student accretion annually but the trend clearly shows the number of DE students is likely to grow more rapidly in the coming period, unless it is closed down.

Today just about 13 per cent of eligible students in our country have the benefit of higher education compared to 70 per cent in most developed countries. A study has shown that less than one per cent of our GDP is spent on higher education. It is estimated that 800 more universities will be needed to meet the demand for higher education. There is a huge gap between available study points and the number of students.

By all counts, Distance Education is the only instrument that can be used to bridge the gap to some extent. The only point that needs to be stressed is that this mode of education has to be freed from the onerous bureaucratic control as it exists today. This control is not only hydra-headed, but it is also a cesspool of corruption. It defeats the lofty ideas of Right to Education as education goes beyond the framework of school-going children. The bureaucratic control is exercised in the name of territorial limits; course content; technical courses; or simply on the franchise concept to penalise the centres that run the DE courses.

When foreign universities are being invited to open campuses in India, why can’t, for example, Delhi University open its DE centres in Bihar or any other part of India? Why should MP or Gujarat or J&K ban other States’ universities from having any presence in these States? This has nothing to do with education being a concurrent subject left only to State governments under differing political control, one can also foresee situations where bogus universities will be set up under State legislation as was done in Chhattisgarh and the Supreme Court had to strike them down.

There is also the question of student’s right. Why can’t a student from Bihar study in Delhi? If he is a DE student in Patna, must he be forced to take credit transfer to a Delhi-based State university now? Why can’t he continue his study in Patna in a study centre of Delhi University? Why this restriction?

Why isn’t there a Central legislation as yet on Distance Education? The National Higher Education and Research Bill is pending in Parliament along with a dozen of education related bills. Its work is bogged down in mutual recriminations of political parties holding up the legislative process. Now it seems the HRD Ministry wants to withdraw it.

The Distance Education centres under various universities are not treated as centres of education. They are considered something as retail shops or franchises. Roughly a decade back there were no takers as such to do the hard work and to till the barren field of Distance Education since it was not the in-thing and people treated the concept with contempt. Those days have fortunately passed and Distance Education today is an accepted mode of learning.

What is the way out of this situation? One way to stop the rot and buck the trend is to make the DE centres an integral part of the university education system, not just contractual entities. The DE centres do not sell merchandise but deal with actual education as per the university syllabus on which depends not only the future of individuals but also of the nation, in the same way as the regular university education.

The second is to divest these so-called regulators of all their individual powers and set up a high-level education commission which should oversee higher education in all formats. All obstructionist methods must be removed to give education a real leg-up.

The author is a journalist of long standing and since 2001 is engaged in education management running a DE centre.