Published in Mainstream VOL XXXIX No 9, 13-17, 2001.

THE CAMPUS OF OPEN LEARNING—A NEW EDUCATION PARADIGM

V.P.JAIN*
INTRODUCTION
The beginning in Distance education in the country was made with the appointment
of a committee under the chairmanship of Prof. D.S. Kothari (1961) and subsequently, the
establishment of the school of correspondence courses (SCC) in Delhi University as a pilot
project in 1962. In spite of all the misgivings and serious reservations about the viability of
the distance mode, soon the SCC not only found a niche in the university system but made
stupendous progress in terms of enrollment. The SCC, today, accommodates one and a half
lakh students, comprising a little more than half the university’s student community, which
has dramatically altered the enrollment profile of the university.

Soon, the initiative was cloned all over the country: Institutions of distance learning
mushroomed in every state and a milestone was created with the opening of the IGNOU in
the year 1985. It is an irony that while the late comers in the field have graduated into
faculties and universities, the SCC which was a pioneering institution of its kind has been
languishing for want of adequate institutional support The institution is no more than an
“academic parking lot” for the surplus students: the university officials have been more than
content only to use it as a buffer to absorb the pressure of thousands of admission seekers
every year who fail to get admission in the regular stream in the colleges.(what a consolation
to be able to exercise one’s democratic right to higher education, whatever it means).

With swarms of students and no worthwhile academic package and virtually no

facilities, the institution has earned the dubious distinction of being termed as an ‘academic
slum’. The institution is allowed to offer only a dozen of outdated and outmoded courses
from a pool of well over fifty programs available in the formal stream. Ever since the School
was started in 1962, not a single department in the university (there are more than seventy)
has cared to design and develop a new curriculum for the students of the SCC. Such is the
deep-seated bias against the distance mode that most of the departments have even refused
to extend their routine courses to the students of the school. Since the SCC enjoys only the
status of a college, the faculty of the institution is not empowered to develop and introduce
any new curriculum as per the university regulations. In-spite of the odds, attempts to take
initiative in this direction were vetoed down by the departments in the university. Yet the
university imposes a development 'cess' on all the students of the school (as a colonial
hangover) and collects a neat one and a half crores of rupees every year for the step-
motherly treatment. Over the years, in sheer desperation, scores of out-standing faculty
members (who could have contributed immensely to the development of the institution, if
retained) have migrated to various prestigious institutions both within the country and
abroad.

The unsettling scenario is symptomatic of the Malthusian 'overloading the system's

tolerance threshold' beyond the adaptive potential of the institution. It is not surprising that
the SCC which had been structured (as a college) to absorb a maximum of ten thousand
students, has virtually collapsed under its own weight. Anticipating the crisis the U.G.C.,
way back in 1985, had exhorted the university to restructure the SCC into a department of
the university. Ever since, however, it has been a sordid tale of constituting expert

*
Department of Economics,
• School of Open Learning, University of Delhi.(Retd)
• Email- vpjain28@rediffmail.com

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 Published in Mainstream VOL XXXIX No 9, 13-17, 2001.

committees and commissions and, of course, prevarication: the proposal has a remarkable
propensity to get into the 'refresh mode', every time the new Vice-Chancellor takes over.
Two committee reports, i.e. the Joshi committee report (tenure of Prof. Moonis Raza) and
the Dass committee report (tenure of Prof. Baxi) which strongly endorsed the UGC
recommendation were consigned to the dustbin, even without finding a place on the agenda
of the university authorities. A third committee was constituted by Prof. Mehta when he took
over as vice-chancellor in 1995. The then chairman of the M.C. of the SCC, Prof.
Panchpakesan was also appointed chairman of the committee and entrusted with the task of
preparing a blueprint for restructuring the SCC. The Committee examined the issue in its
totality, afresh on the basis of the recommendations of Prof. Maurya committee, appointed
by the Managing Committee of the SCC and adopted unanimously by the staff council of
the school. In spite of stiff resistance from various quarters in the university, the
Panchpakesan committee report, after an extended debate, was finally adopted by the
Academic Council(A.C) and the Executive Council(E.C).of the university.

The necessary amendments to the statutes and ordinances for the creation of an
Open Campus in the university were referred to the Visitor for approval. The process took
more than two years to be completed, thanks to the bureaucratic wrangles. Finally the ‘D
day’ arrived and the ministry of human resource development notified the Visitor’s approval
to the new structure in August,1999. The approval was reported in the subsequent meetings
of the AC and the EC. The EC also adopted the Chandrashekhar Rao committee report
regarding the implementation of the new structure and directed to work out the modalities
for the same. In spite of the university notification to this effect the new dispensation is
unable to find expression and become operational. It is a typical case of Brian Arthur’s
positive feedback economics: an inferior ‘technology finds a niche due to some fortuitous
circumstances, develops positive 'feedback-loops' (vested interests in the present case) and
gets ‘locked in’ in its dominant position; not even a new superior technology, howsoever
promising, can dislodge it in the normal process.

Given the elite character of the university, the resistance is understandable: the
restructuring of the SCC is an initiative essentially in the direction of social re-engineering.
Most of the students of the school come from marginalized and socially disadvantaged
sections of the society, the poorest social strata accounting for the bulk of the enrollment. All
over the world, Open Universities have played a significant role in increasing opportunities
for students from poor family circumstances in urban areas, women and the rural folks
whose enrollment in the formal stream is much less than their representation in the general
population. The restructuring is to be appreciated in the wider social context, besides all the
promise it has as a new education technology.

OPEN CAMPUS--- THE NEW PARADIGM

Peter Druker, the management guru, recently forecast that information technology
will bring about the demise of the university as currently constituted. But luckily, higher
education already has a history of fruitful experimentation with distance learning. It has
been amply demonstrated that technology makes it possible to deliver (and relatively cheap)
higher education beyond a physical campus. The campus of open learning, as a radical re-
conceptualization of higher education is not to be perceived in isolation, simply as an add-on
to the existing set-up in the university. As a virtual campus it has to be understood as part of
the re-engineering of the larger educational infrastructure and the manner in which it is
organised today. It will help create the necessary framework for real consensus building

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around a new set of assumptions that recognizes the impact of new education
technology, which impels us to re-think how we teach and learn, irrespective of the stream
one enrolls in.

The boundaries between the formal and non-formal education sector are getting
fuzzy, and very soon, may disappear completely. Face to face classroom teaching is no
longer considered the most coveted option. Students enroll themselves in prestigious
institutions more for the price tag it carries rather than for the fancy for conventional
teaching. The best of the students enroll themselves in the formal stream and occupy slots
which they do not use. The evidence is seen in the classrooms deserted by the students,
pursuing courses elsewhere as back-ups even in unaccredited institutions, perceived to teach
the practical skills required in the workplace. If the distance mode is accorded a more decent
place in the university by operationalizing the campus of open learning, It would also attract
these high profile students. The seats vacated would then go to the less charismatic students
down the line, who would benefit more from the conventional mode. The present
anomalous situation, which is also a pointer to gross misallocation of precious resources,
emanates from a one-dimensional mind-set, totally oblivious to innovative reforms
reflecting the personal choices of students.

Caught in a time warp, the embarrassed faculty (in the formal sector) with their
wounded pride, is only responding by suggesting regimentation to coerce students into the
classroom. (i.e. minimum attendance to be eligible to take an exam) But if we go into the
genesis of the problem, we can easily see that the crisis runs much deeper than what the
ostensibly destabilizing scenario suggests: the students are simply acting rationally by
choosing more rewarding options. The ubiquitous course material of the distance mode has
caught the imagination of students in a big way and has popularized a parallel education
system: it flourishes in the form of self-help study material, both in print media and CD
based tutorial manuals, the television education channels and, of course, the world wide
web. The success story of the readymade class-notes prepared and circulated by the seniors
(as witnessed by the spread of xerox culture) has rendered face to face teaching redundant
for a whole lot of students. The open campus has already established itself, albeit only
obliquely. All that needs to be done is to formalise it, give it the systematic form and the
content it deserves so that it can play a decisive role in shaping the university of the 21st
century.

THE OPEN CAMPUS FORMAT

Over the years, distance learning has evolved from correspondence courses to video
and satellite broadcasting models of remote learning. The Open Campus will create a
platform for the university to go online. The campus will have a specific distance learning
focus. It will host the necessary infrastructure and create academic learning space for the
university to capitalise on this huge opportunity for distance education. But it will not be a
closed environment. The idea is to pick the best teachers in the university and make them
available to a wide spectrum of students and not just those in physical proximity. The Open
Campus, as a collaborative scheme, will promote partnerships at all levels, integrating all the
departments and the colleges into a network which would ensure participation of all the
willing players in the new venture. Any department (belonging to science, humanities or
social sciences) either on its own or in collaboration with other departments would have the
facility to offer courses in the open campus (like the South Campus). The department of
distance education, by drawing the best talents in the university (outsourcing), will innovate

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and design curricula, develop teaching methodologies and systems of evaluation for the
students of the open campus as a special target group. The courses so developed can also be
offered in formal stream if desired. The campus can, thus, provide an open platform for
shared academic activities in the domain of course design, instruction and evaluation. The
recently set up School of Environmental Studies, which is all prepared to launch its
'environment awareness course' as a compulsory subject for all the students of the university,
is a trendsetter in this regard. The AC has already approved an innovative hybrid format,
blending formal and distance teaching modes for conducting the course. The university,
with the convergence of the formal and the non-formal system of education will become a
full-fledged dual mode institution.

The distance learning mode has the advantage to use a variety of technologies,
learning methodologies, online collaboration and instructor facilitation to achieve applied
learning results not possible from formal education. The canvas can be further widened by
incorporating synchronous, asynchronous and self-paced collaborative learning with the
help of new information technology. The main benefit of the new approach, besides its
ability to reach students in distance locations, is the encouragement it will give to the
university to offer a more flexible ‘distributed learning’(web based) environment. Moreover,
it will also be possible to individualize the teaching-learning process even with the large
numbers we would cater to in the open campus.

Since distance learning employs a modular approach, students can opt for any mix of
courses(cafeteria system) not possible in the conventional mode because of the resource
constraints. Courses, in the formal sector are organized in rigid disciplines (e.g. economics
honors) and there is very little scope for object oriented learning (except as an apology) in
the form of some optional papers. But the open campus would offer exciting possibilities:
students would be free to combine courses in innumerable ways to suit their specific needs
and fancies. The freedom will generate all kinds of new interdisciplinary and
multidisciplinary courses and give education a new perspective.

In recent years, a number of universities have responded to community needs by

taking initiatives to open up more direct avenues of contact with their local and regional
surroundings, to serve wider social purposes. Within the context of rapid technological
changes, training and education is seen as an ongoing activity, (as the employees need to
learn new skills and acquire new knowledge quickly and continuously) and the universities
are under pressure to assign a more challenging role to part time and continuing education.
The Campus of Open Learning, with a range of flexible delivery choices and distance
learning options, is precisely designed to respond to the needs of the individuals motivated
for professional development.

The university needs to be reformed in the functional direction in response to growth

in social demand for higher education, which economic change and heightened aspirations,
has created. The Open Campus can play a decisive role in fulfilling this task by (1)
quantitative expansion in the number of students proceeding along established curriculum
linkages and pathways from higher education to labour and (2) by orienting the contents of
study towards interdisciplinary work or more vocationally biased courses.

STUDY CENTRES

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The success of Britain’s Open University owes much to the network of regional self-
study centres. The Open Campus will have a chain of self-study centres spread all over the
city, with elaborate paraphernalia as learning support system: a decent library (both printed
and electronic study material), audio-visual teaching aids, computer network and tutors. The
self-study centres can be located in various colleges of the university. The sharing of the
infrastructure between the regular students of the college and the students of the Open
Campus can be worked out in an optimal manner to the advantage of both. The campus can
finance creation of the necessary infrastructure, both hardware and software and networking
requirements. The willing teaching faculty of the college can be associated with the
academic programs of the Campus as an adjunct faculty: to develop new courses, participate
in personal contact programs, organise practical classes for science based courses and help
the Campus students as tutors in the self-study centres. The self-study centres will be
integrated with the Open Campus by computer network and will have the facility to
download study material of choice, fortified with self-help collaborative tutorial systems.

EXAMINATION
The examination system in the university has lost all the credibility it once enjoyed.
The SCC has been forced to adopt the same format with disastrous consequences. One of the
serious problems with the examination of the students of the SCC, is the inordinate delay in
the evaluation of the scripts and declaration of the results. Several computer based on-line
examination modes are available and more can be developed for the students of the Open
Campus.

FINANCE
Distance education is cost effective in various ways. Distance learning often operates
at more efficient teacher/student ratio. The SCC has a teaching faculty of about eighty for a
student population of one and half lakhs. Several studies have established that the unit cost
in distance education is distinctly lower than in the conventional mode. On an average, the
financial deficit per college is estimated to be of the order of five to six crores of rupees per
year. The total deficit for all the colleges in the university comes to more than three hundred
crores per year. In sharp contrast to this, the estimated deficit for the SCC, which caters to
more students than the combined strength of all the colleges taken together, is no more than
the average of only one college (i.e. six crores). It would be of interest to know that the SCC
has been meeting this deficit from its surplus account for a number of years and as such has
been self supporting financially. And yet there are tremendous possibilities of further
economising if the university views the mismanagement of the institution with more concern
(and takes the impending reform more seriously), which has, of late assumed scandalous
proportions. The institution has all the promise, not only to be a self-supporting unit, but also
generate surplus for the more pampered formal sector.

CONCLUSION
There will always be some loose ends and imponderables in the implementation of a
novel idea. But these uncertainties should not disorient us and make us lose the sense of
direction and the destination. It is best to leave them to the evolutionary process to be sorted
out. It may be of some interest to remember, that all of us made our beginning in the
‘primordial soup’ millions of years ago in a very humble way, and in a shape not very
flattering. The only substantive issue which is at stake and which needs to be seriously
addressed is the academic robustness of the restructured format. It is pertinent to point out

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that the new structure has emerged as a consensus after wide spread consultation and a
thorough debate in all the statutory bodies of the university. It is unfortunate that the
realisation of the C.O.L. remains elusive, in spite of all the media hype to promise a fair deal
to meet the new academic demands of thousands of marginalized students, who take
admission in the non-formal stream every year. It is an irony, that the Vice-Chancellor,
instead of accelerating the process of completing the unfinished task by working out the
remaining modalities for the operationalisation of the C.O.L; has chosen to put it in a state
of suspended animation, the constant refrain being some silly, academically inconsequential,
technical snag (statute II), which accords membership of the University Court to the
Director, C.O.L. It is pertinent to point out that the University Court is a huge body of about
400 members which includes all Professors and all Principals and to shoot down the entire
proposal due to a non- issue like this only smacks of some design. The statute could not be
cleared only by default and the same was referred to the Ministry again for approval. It is a
sad commentary on the functioning of the ministry and the U.G.C, who have not bothered to
clear the same till date, even though the same was referred to them in April, last year. It is a
pity, that by not operationalising the C.O.L. we are missing a great opportunity to innovate
and experiment, by adapting to meet the challenges of the new millennium, by stifling the
pressures which tend towards conformity. In conclusion, one may observe that “change and
disequilibria are probably more natural than equilibrium and stasis. Those who can adapt
and learn will survive and this will depend on their creativity.”( Allen P.M.)