Distance education courses in Calicut University reducing considerably

Thenjipalam: The decision to cut short the number of distance education courses in Calicut University has come as a major blow to the students of Malabar region. It should be noted that in the region with a limited number of government-aided colleges, students rely heavily on the distance education programmes offered by the university. 

Earlier, almost 50,000 students enrolled in the distance education program at Calicut University every year. Ever since the UGC granted approval for the Sree Narayana Guru Open  University to run more courses, the number of students enrolling for distance education courses at Calicut university has decreased considerably. While a total number of 53,531 students had registered for various distance education courses in Calicut University in the academic year 2019-20, the numbers reduced drastically to a mere 28,476 students in the academic year 2022-23. The decrease in number of students for such programs have created sizeable financial loss for the university as well.

While Calicut University earned Rs 29.85 crores by running distance education courses in the academic year 2019-20, the university’s revenue in this regard reduced to just Rs 6.51 crores in the academic year 2022-23.

Earlier, Calicut University had run the most number of distance education courses in the state. 12 Degree courses and 13 PG courses to be precise. However, at present, the university is only running 4 Degree courses and 8 PG courses.

The degree courses which are currently available in the university are BA Afzal-ul-Ulama, Political Science, BBA and Bcom. The PG courses in the institution include Mcom, MSC Maths, MA Philosophy, Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic, Political Science, and Economics. Since the syllabus for regular and distance courses at Calicut University are the same, students always have the option to switch their mode of education. However such facilities won’t be available for a student in an open university.

Since the registration for distance education courses at Calicut University reduced drastically, over 100 parallel colleges which run classes for such courses have shut down.