IGNOU's contribution to higher edu 'understated': Outgoing VC

The outgoing vice chancellor of IGNOU, Ravindra Kumar, said today that the varsity's "immense contribution" to higher education was not properly assessed and that it was "understated".
Kumar, who retired today after a tenure of nearly one year, was instrumental in providing fee exemption to transgender students and relocation of its regional centres among other major initiatives.
"IGNOU is a phenomenal system. Unfortunately, its contributions have not been properly assessed," Kumar said.
He, however, clarified that he did not hold anyone in particular responsible for the varsity's contribution being "understated".
Kumar said textbooks of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) were unparallelled as it tried to bridge the gap between textbooks and syllabus.

"Ninety per cent of textbooks do not reflect what the syllabus says. But IGNOU has tried to make up for this deficiency. This is one of the gifts that IGNOU has given to higher education sector. We have standardised the content without any bias," he said.

He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would inaugurate in December this year IGNOU's two major solar education programmes -- Solar Awareness and Solar Applications in Water Pump -- to be offered to students from the countries in the International Solar Alliance.
According to varsity sources, the senior most professor among directors of IGNOU normally takes over as the next VC.

Director of School of Health Sciences S B Arora is the next in line, they added.