In a bid to integrate its community colleges with the government?s National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) and the National Vocational Education Qualifications Framework (NVEQF), the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) plans to have a re-look at its Community College Scheme and plans to shut almost 380 of them in the next six months.
Of the 532 community colleges, which cater to almost 80,000 students, IGNOU claims that only 150 are performing as expected and, hence, the others will have to shut shop. During the process of weeding out non-performers, fresh admissions to such colleges will be stopped and no new colleges would be set up.
?The Community College Scheme is to be subjected to a thorough time-bound review. Till then, all actions will be kept in abeyance. The vice-chancellor may constitute the review committee(s) to complete the task in six months,? the university?s Board of management said recently.
The Ignou Community College Scheme is meant primarily for the underprivileged sections of the society. Under this scheme, a communtiy college can register for offering academic programmes at the levels of certificate, diploma and associate degree.
After successfully completing the study through this scheme, a student is certified by Ignou and also gets placed.
?The ministry of human resource development is in the process of setting up model community colleges and, hence, we are also integrating our colleges with the existing vocational and skills schemes. We are not scrapping the scheme, only aligning it with the existing ones,? Pardeep Sahni, nodal officer, community colleges, Ignou, said.
With the integration, students will be able to accumulate credits and get degrees recognised by Ignou. The ministry has decided to start 100 community colleges on a pilot basis in 2012-13 and, then, scale up gradually and states have been requested to identify local skill requirements linked to local needs, which could form the basis of opening community colleges.
