JU Directorate of Distance Edu providing ‘substandard’ degrees

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, May 14

For more than 17,500 students pursuing undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses through the Directorate of Distance Education (DDE), University of Jammu, there are just 15 faculty members.

To meet the challenges with ever-growing number of students, the DDE, as a temporary measure, uses the services of visiting and contractual faculty. The sorry state-of-affairs at the DDE poses a serious question as whether a degree from the distance learning system is at par with a degree awarded by a regular university.

Official sources said at present there are 17,554 students pursuing undergraduate, including BCom, and postgraduate courses in the DDE at Jammu University. Of all, there are 5,627 students in undergraduate courses and BCom (3,012 in Part-I, 1,200 in Part-II and 1,415 in Part-III).

“For undergraduate courses, there are only five permanent faculty members, while the authorities have engaged about 10 contractual teachers. The irony is that the faculty members catering to undergraduate courses have also been given the additional charge of various postgraduate courses,” sources said.

There are 11,927 students, including maximum of 3,219 in English subject, followed by 2,687 in sociology, doing postgraduate courses through the distance mode and for them the directorate has only nine permanent faculty members and 11 contractual teachers (some of them also deal with undergraduate courses), the sources said.

“There is a complete mess in the existing system. The limited faculty members are overburdened as they are not only assigned the task of conducting practical classes in undergraduate courses, including home science, psychology, statistics and geography, but also prepare study material, evaluate assignments and other tasks,” the sources said.

The sources added, “For around 2,000 regular students in various postgraduate courses being offered by Jammu University, there are more than 250 faculty members, but the imparting of quality education to students at the DDE is still a distant dream. During the 15-day Personal Conduct Programme (PCP) the authorities sometimes install loudspeakers to teach students. Justice is not being done to the students who pay hefty amount at the time of admission in the DDE.”

The DDE (formerly known as the Institute of Correspondence Education) was established on March 3, 1976, in the University of Jammu. The enrolment has grown from under 100 students in the year of its establishment to more than 17,500 students in 2015.

A senior faculty member at the DDE said, “We cannot equate the graduation and postgraduation degree granted to a candidate by formal conventional recognised universities after conducting a conventional course on regular basis with a degree granted by the Directorate of Distance Education. In other words, we are offering substandard degrees to students through the distance mode.”

“The need of the hour is the revamp of the existing system. If a student pays around Rs 6,000 for a postgraduate programme or Rs 5,000 for an undergraduate course at the time of admission, he or she should have full right to get quality education as being imparted to students pursuing these courses on a regular basis through formal university,” the faculty member said.