Importance of Distance Education in India

Importance of Distance Education in India Asif Ahmed

After independence, India had made tremendous progress in the field of education, though mostly quantitative in nature. Earlier, education was available only to the elites in society, and a large majority of poor and marginalized people remained illiterate. Political considerations have an important role in the expansion of higher education, especially at the state level. The state government experienced tremendous pressure from the public to establish more and more colleges and universities. In a democratic society, even the strong governments find it very difficult to resist such pressures and are compelled to succumb to the same. These considerations have led to fast expansion of higher education in our country, which in turn, have adverse impact upon its quality. Therefore, in order to insure access and education of a reasonably good quality, we must think of some alternative system capable of supplementing the role of conventional system, and distance education is one of such alternatives. The distance education mode was adopted by many universities to meet the ever-growing demand of those students who lacked means to pursue higher education through the regular stream. Also, there were economic constraints. Consequently, many universities in India in various regions started correspondence courses or programs by providing notes, developing a system of evaluation of response sheets. The success of these courses led to the establishment of Indira Gandhi National Open University, which is now rated as one of the best distance courses university in the world. Due to limitations of the formal system of education, policy makers were attracted towards non-conventional modes of education for providing non-residential studies like correspondence courses. The Distance Education mode, in which it is not necessary to bring