Effectiveness of Distance Education System

The open learning system has been initiated to augment opportunities for higher education and to make it a life long process. The flexibility and innovativeness of open learning system have suited to the diverse requirements of the people and helped in developing the distance education system in a marvelous fashion around the world. In India too, there are a good number of distance education centers and open universities to make the interested pursue higher education staying at their residences itself. Recognizing the importance of distance education system in educating the people with ease and effect, a study was conducted to identify the effectiveness of distance education system in Andhra Pradesh. The distance education system in Andhra Pradesh is providing opportunities for the realization of the objective of higher education, helping the learners to understand social issues, enabling the clientele to contribute to national development, playing its effective role in the field of women education, able to cater to the students who want mother tongue as a medium of learning, offering a number of courses in various disciplines, and producing and supplying quality study material to the learners. The other side of the coin is suffering from wastage and stagnation, more failures than passes, ineffective student support services, and difficulty in acquiring reference books. This study shall serve as a model to the researchers, academicians and educationists in conducting similar studies at state and national level. The results, discussion and suggestions offered will have their place in distance education system.