Dr. Avnish Jolly:The Distant Education Council (DEC) has advised the country’s Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry to stop such practices and Ban foreign education franchises and Government of India is likely to pass a law banning educational institutions in the country from opening franchises abroad for running distant education courses.
V N Rajasekharran Pillai, Chairman, DEC and Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) shared that we know that several educational institutions, mainly private ones, are opening their franchises abroad. This is a bad practice and we are against it and clarify, we are not against opening of new institutes by Indian institutions. But giving permissions to a local party (abroad) by Indian institutions is not good.
The council has asked the HRD Ministry to incorporate all these "points and concerns" in a proposed bill on distance education pending before it.
He stressed that we are not against Indian education going global but not franchises. This is affecting, and will affect, the quality of education and compromise with the necessary guidelines and a number of Indian institutions are allowing local parties, especially in the Gulf countries, to start distant learning education centres.
Led by IGNOU, several state open learning universities were in Delhi earlier this week to deliberate on ways to strengthen distance learning programmes.