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The Indian higher education system has an enrolment of almost 11 million students. Out of these almost 24% are in ODL system and the rest are in conventional systems of education. One of the most important concerns in almost all developing countries is to provide access and reach of higher education to a large cross-section of people. The higher education system must be based on some of the following underlying principles: (1) For increasing enrolment for higher education, all forms of education delivery, such as conventional, ODL, ICT enabled, virtual system of education must converge and become supplement of one another. (2) There is a growing realization and acceptance that the Government does not have enough financial resources to provide education to all by itself. Therefore, the policies of private participation must be made more inclusive and regulation of the policies must be enforced with more commitment. (3) The private sector must be allowed to operate on profit sharing basis and clear rules must be enforced so that a large part of the profit is ploughed back into the higher education system itself, to increase the educational infrastructure of the country. (4) Regulation of the quality of education must be slowly decentralized to education commissions, run and operated by educationists rather than the government. One of the important concerns of the conventional system has been the inflexibility in the curriculum, which kills innovation. The experiences of a dual mode university in higher education, which has introduced innovation to remodel the higher education system by mapping the entire curriculum in a Pyramid Structure would be discussed. The structure introduces flexibility through a multi-entry-multi-exit system of education starting after post secondary education and filters students at each level of graduation and post-graduation, till the best achieve the competency to complete postgraduate degree in IT related fields. A Public-Private partnership model being practiced by a State run University shall be presented which has increased brought more than 200% rise in enrolment during the past two years.

Stream: Learning Technologies: What They Do and How They Work

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Dr. Singh is M.Sc from Banaras Hindu University, India and Ph.D from University of Western Ontario, London, CANADA. He is currently the Dean of Distance Education and heads the department which is one of the largest in the Northern part of India. Before joining the university in 2003, he has been associated with the All India Council for Technical Education, the apex organization for promoting quality in the field of higher professional and technical education throughout the country. Dr. Singh is a member of various committees at the National level and is a founder member of Education Promotion Society of India which deals with recommending policies and changes in the educational system for making it more effective and relevant.