Friday, Jan 23, 2009
Madurai: The Distance Education Council (DEC), New Delhi, has written to all universities to stop following ‘franchisee model’ for opening distance education study centres at various places.

An advisory was issued to distance education wings of varsities stating that franchisee model was not permitted as per DEC norms for setting up study centres, V. N. Rajasekharan Pillai, DEC Chairman and IGNOU Vice-Chancellor, told The Hindu here on Thursday. “In the name of study centres, universities are going for franchisees where adequate facilities are not available. Serious malpractices have been reported in certain centres,” he said.

He said that the universities/institutions which were offering distance education programmes must adhere to the DEC advisory note “and they have to change in the interest of maintaining quality of distance education.” According to him, the Distance Education Council had stopped provisional recognition for certain institutions where malpractices were detected in their study centres.

Dr. Pillai was in the city to participate in the inauguration of construction of IGNOU Madurai Regional Centre. In order to ensure quality standards in distance education stream, too, the DEC had come out with a module for universities to go for assessment/accreditation of their distance education wing. The module, designed by experts, would look into several aspects including study centres, qualification of teaching staff, part-time lecturers’ eligibility and technology deployment.

The accreditation would be given for a period of five years after a thorough examination by DEC. “If serious malpractices are found in universities, there is a provision for withdrawal of accreditation,” Dr. Pillai said.