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This story is from October 23, 2017

Sitting on Rs 473cr corpus, School of Open Learning can’t spare Rs 10L for digital learning

Sitting on a corpus of Rs 473 crore, boosted by annual interest and fee income of Rs 45 crore last year, the governing body of Delhi University’s School of Open Learning has decided it still cannot afford to spend Rs 10 lakh to facilitate digital learning for around 1,800 poor students.
Sitting on Rs 473cr corpus, School of Open Learning can’t spare Rs 10L for digital learning
File Photo
New Delhi: Sitting on a corpus of Rs 473 crore, boosted by annual interest and fee income of Rs 45 crore last year, the governing body of Delhi University’s School of Open Learning has decided it still cannot afford to spend Rs 10 lakh to facilitate digital learning for around 1,800 poor students.
SOL came up with a project to provide tablets to 1,849 students from the below-poverty-line section to enable them access to the school’s digital platform and e-resources.
According to SOL sources, the school spends around Rs 15 crore every year on printing study materials, but the governing board, at its meeting on September 29, refused to sanction Rs 10 lakh that would have given the needy students the tablets, each estimated to cost around Rs 5,000.
According to a person who was present in the meeting, SOL’s governing body shot down the idea because it decided that “corporate social responsibility is not required of an education institution”.
At a loss on how to move forward, CS Dubey, chairman of Campus of Open Learning, has written to the Union ministry of human resource development (MHRD) to intervene and allow the use of funds for the digital initiative.
According to a senior MHRD official, the letter states that despite the huge amount lying unused for years, the plan to help poor students with tablets customised for SOL’s indigenous learning management system/ dashboard already in operation was not sympathetically considered at the special governing board meeting.
When contacted, Dubey refused to comment on his letter to the ministry. However, he said that while SOL is striving to develop the flipped-classroom technology by giving more importance to virtual/ audio-visual teaching-learning followed by activity/skill-based experiential learning, it is “important to offer information and communication technology tools to the students from a financially weaker background for inclusive education”.
Dubey said that even as the government of India pushed for a digital platform in education through Swayam, students could access learning materials on tablets through initiatives like SOL’s own 101 video lectures and SGTB Khalsa College’s 100 MOOC lectures. He added that without digital intervention, economically disadvantaged students would miss out on various e-resources available to SOL.
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