With all the advancements in the cultural and scientific fronts, the country has also advanced in its educational facilities. The Indian government, along with the education ministry, has worked towards providing greater opportunities for students and especially for the ones who want to carry on with their higher studies but fail to do so for various reasons. To avoid these problems faced by people who cannot complete their studies, the world’s education system came up with a solution; open universities. The first-ever open university was set up in Europe, the Open University UK, in 1930. Therefore this trend of open education through open universities started to spread all over the world. The other countries have happily embraced this trend realizing that students who generally don’t fulfill the usual admission criteria and the people who had to leave their education for other valid reasons should be given a chance to complete their education and improve their knowledge such as the recent IGNOU MA admission in India and such other courses which offer the same.
Open university refers to those universities which are open to all and have no entry requirements, the goal being to offer everyone equal opportunities to develop their abilities who accept any student without the barriers of age or any specific prior educational requirement. In India, the Indira Gandhi Open University Act came into force in 1985, which was done to promote and coordinate open education in India. The first open university in India is Dr. B.R Ambedkar Open University(BRAOU), which introduced the aforementioned open education. Following these, various other open universities came up, such as IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), which now even take candidates for IGNOU MBA admission and other important courses.
The idea of open education and open universities was whole heartily welcomed by the citizens of India. The number of people who had to leave their studies midway and the people who couldn’t get into the country’s major universities because of their low grades got a verified and successful way of completing their pending education. Once the universities started major courses and started taking in students, such as IGNOU MBA admission, the universities gained a lot of popularity because thousands of people wanted to take up these courses. These open universities provided the flexibility of age with the great quality of education. People going to their everyday jobs, people unable to get into other MBA colleges because of their age, could easily complete their MBA from IGNOU. The success of the open universities such as IGNOU was visible because IGNOU soon became one of the largest open universities. Being established in 1985, the university started offering as many as 338 programs for at least 3,500 courses, which was considered and taken up by more than 25 lakh students from all over the country. The admissions, such as the IGNOU MA admission and admissions for other such courses, occur very simply where the candidates are needed to fill an online application form. From then on, they are guided by the university itself. IGNOU functions so well only with the help of its successfully established network, which consists of 43 regional centers (RC’s), six Sub Regional Centres, and almost 1,400 Study centers which are distributed all over the country so the people from any corner of the country can be provided easy access and effective support to avail the services of the open universities.
Some of the merits of the Open Universities are as follows:-
- Provides supplement the efforts of the traditional system
- Equality of Opportunity
- Expand geographical access to education
- Education in a more natural manner
- Expanding the capacity for education in new areas and among the economically backward section.
- Various flexibility which is offered
- Cost-Effectiveness
- Student Support Services
These merits and factors make open universities a more open option for candidates from all over the country.
