The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Open varsity learning unit inaugurated

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 14, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Open varsity learning unit inaugurated

Staff Reporter

It should help cut dropout rate The new facility will provide information about courses, hold contact classes and distribute study materials

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Open University's Learning Resource Centre (TNOU-LRC) was on Wednesday inaugurated at the Tamil Nadu Foundation Inc. office here.

M.S. Palanichamy, Vice-Chancellor of the University, said the facility was to encourage more students to take up University education. "This brings education to everyone's doorstep," he said.

With 32 such LRCs in Chennai and 165 centres in Tamil Nadu, this could ensure a decrease in the dropout rate of students, he said. "If the students have to travel more, the possibility of dropouts is higher."

The TNF will help in disseminating information about the University's courses and create awareness, be a centre for contact classes, organise a common place for conducting examinations, provide counselling on the course of study for students and also be a nodal point for distribution of study materials, he said.

Inaugurating the LRC, he said the TNOU had enrolled about 25,000 students since its start in 2003. In the current academic year it was introducing diploma programme for pre-primary teachers and diploma in health assistants. The University now offers 59 courses.

A.K. Venkata Subramanian, Trustee, TNF, said only seven per cent of the people had access to higher education and the remaining 93 per cent were not pursuing higher education.

He highlighted that there were more opportunities for employment in the services sector.

S. Arumugam, Additional Director, Directorate of Technical Education and S. Kavitha, Project Manager, TNF, Chennai and F. Abubecker, secretary of the Kancheepuram Coordinator of TNF spoke.

The programme was simultaneously webcast through www.tnoutnf.org. by R.R. Suresh, Academic Counsellor, TNOU. Viewers around the world had immediate queries about TNOU programmes.

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