The Role for Distance Education in India

Abstract

The development of higher education is of crucial significance to economic growth and social progress. Conventional education systems in India are constrained, in the face of rapidly increasing demand for education and qualifications, economically and geographically. Distance learning offers a low-cost, equitable, and efficient alternative. In this article, M.M. Ansari provides a financial comparison of conventional and distance education and considers the relative ‘quality’ of each. He then highlights a number of policy issues, including the importance of ploughing back revenue generated by distance learning programmes into distance learning schemes, rather than diverting it to subsidize conventional education; the matching of tuition to actual costs; and the need for a greater degree of networking and cooperation between educational institutions to effect economies of scale.