Have a skill? Now get a degree, and a ticket to college

The skills of a cook or a locality motor mechanic could now help him earn a certificate or a degree, if the person is willing to put in a few hours of classroom study everyday.

Updated on: Jul 4, 2009, 23:52:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The skills of a cook or a locality motor mechanic could now help him earn a certificate or a degree, if the person is willing to put in a few hours of classroom study everyday.

“We now have a system where skills of a person will help him enroll in a community college and get a degree or a certificate depending on number of credits the student earns,” said Om Prakash Sharma, Pro-Vice Chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the country’s largest open university, after launch the credit education system on Saturday.

A person can do IGNOU’s six-month Bachelor Preparatory Programme, equivalent to class XII, and then take admission in a community college. There, he or she will earn credits for the quality of their skills.

For instance, if the total credits required to complete a particular course are 96 and students has earned 60 through work experience, “the remaining 36 credits he or she can earn in the classroom and get certification that will be recognised in all universities in India,” Sharma said.

Community colleges are a relatively new concept in India, unlike United States and Canada, where they are extremely popular known as junior colleges. Community colleges, which have opened in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, have flexible timings for students to attend classes.

On Saturday, the Community College courses got recognition with IGNOU launching its programme to grant certificate for one-year course and an associate degree for two years course. “The associate degree will be equivalent to a pass-out of second year from a degree college and will allow lateral entry of students to formal education system,” Sharma said.

NGOs, civil society groups (like Delhi-based All-India Women’s Conference) and companies will be allowed to open community colleges and get recognition from IGNOU. To start with, IGNOU has short-listed 100 applications received from 800 community colleges around India.

“The beneficiaries of the community colleges will be the schoolchildren who will be allowed to go for full-time, part-time or optional approaches to develop themselves,” said minister of state for Human Resource Development D Purandeshwari, while launching the programme.

Sharma said the community colleges would prepare their own syllabus and conduct examination under supervision of IGNOU. “We will compromise on rigidity of timing but not on academics,” he added.

IGNOU expects that in a year’s time there will be more than 1,000 community colleges in India, offering courses for the certificate and degree programme.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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