Book review: V. S. Prasad, Higher Education and Open Distance Learning Trajectory in India: Reflections of an Insider
| DOI | 10.1177/0019556119863594 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Author | Arvind K. Sharma |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Indian Journal of Public
Administration
65(2) 584–599, 2019
© 2019 IIPA
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DOI:10.1177/0019556119863594
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Book Reviews
V. S. Prasad, Higher Education and Open Distance Learning Trajectory in
India: Reflections of an Insider. Hyderabad: Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Open
University, 2018, 125 pp. (paperback). ISBN: 978-18-938160-0-4.
It has been published as an open-educational-resource book by B. R. Ambedkar
Open University. The book is available as Open Educational Resource (OER)
at www.braouvidyagani.in
This book presents an elegant and a panoramic view of India’s higher education
system. It comprises a compilation of twelve eminent essays in three discrete
realms. First, higher education in its conventional mode: the country’s university
sector. Second, higher education in its distance-learning mode: reference is to
the open universities that came on the scene mainly during the 1980s and after.
The third dimension concerns the quality assurance: how have the conventional
universities and open universities performed on the ground and how adequate has
been the quality measurement process and paraphernalia. Four essays each are
devoted to the three sections that comprise the book.
The said essays are a revised and updated version of what originated as stand-
alone pieces: in the form of lectures, addresses and articles. What merits a specific
mention is that the book under review forms the first piece in the open-educational-
resources (OER) repository that the country’s first university in distance education
mode, the Hyderabad-based Dr B. R. Ambedkar Open University, has recently set
up. The OER philosophy—a 21st century development in the field of education—
lays stress on open access to educational resources. Knowledge—in the OER
scheme of things—is the society’s common wealth.
The book carries a captivating account of the unprecedented expansion of higher
education in the post-independence period; how from barely twenty at the time of
independence the number of the university-level institutions in the country has as
of now risen to well beyond 800 (pp. 11–12). The first two sections, as a matter of
fact, touch upon a diverse range of themes, both empirical as well as normative.
The author discusses in minute detail—in the third section of the book—the rise
and expansion of the country’s quality-assurance system; alongside subjects India’s
experience of quality assurance via the assessment and accreditation routes to a
critical scrutiny.
That the emphasis on expansion unaccompanied by a systemic self-regulation
will adversely affect the quality is to say the obvious (pp. 16–17). This self-regulation
is designed to ensure that the prescribed procedures that typically characterise a
university set-up (illustratively, the board of studies meetings, teacher–student
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