The key to their success, I think, is two-fold:

·They limit the number of courses offered. This means they can spend more time on researching, writing, and evaluating materials.

·They have decentralized student support and administration to hundreds of regional study centres. This moves the university closer to their students, but also allows core staff to focus on the quality of learning provided.

So, for instance, despite an enrolment of over 500,000 students, IGNOU offers only 47 programmes. This translates into over 110,000 students per programme. These programmes, in turn, are made up from 553 courses, an average enrolment of close on a thousand learners for each course. According to staff at IGNOU, this allows them to spend substantial amounts of core academic time in course research and development, as well as research in their particular discipline.

The 295 core academic staff - a staff:student ratio of 1:1753 - looks a great deal better when regional and part-time staff are included. The massively decentralized IGNOU also employs:

·21 regional centre directors, all of whom are full-time professorial level appointments;

·600 study centre coordinators and assistants, all of whom are full-time lecturer level appointments;

·19 000 academic counsellors employed in regional and sub-regional centres (generally part-time employees drawn from other higher education institutions and schools); and

·1000 administrative staff in regional and sub-regional centres.

Clearly the part-time counsellors are at the heart of IGNOU's success: they are at the chalkface. IGNOU staff emphasize the importance of ongoing training, support, and monitoring. Thus full-time staff tend not to teach or mark, but spend lots of time:

·developing courses;

·doing research;

·selecting, training, and overseeing part-time teachers; and

·quality assuring teaching through research and ongoing moderation of marking.

Part-time teaching staff are, firstly, appointed from 'excellent' IGNOU graduates and then on the basis of qualifications and expertise in the field. The latter criterion is very important because, in many cases, study centres are located in industrial laboratories, hospitals, and schools (depending on the professional expertise being developed), and employees in these institutions act as tutors or counsellors.

In order to guarantee quality, IGNOU also:

·provides all part-time staff with week-long, face-to-face orientation courses;

·ongoing satellite support;

·a detailed resource pack; and

·ongoing monitoring.

To administer such a massive organization efficiently in an equally large country, virtually all functions, except final administration and course quality, have been devolved to regional centres. Teaching is devolved further to an array of sub-regional centres. All of these, though, are linked to the centre via computer and satellite. The structure is like a massive pyramid:

(IGNOU inDelhi)

21 Regional Centres

(satellite-linked; in regional capitals; own buildings)

+/- 380 Study Centres

252 Regular centres

(the district HQs; satellite-linked; IGNOU's equipment but based in other institutions)

19 Recognized centres

(other areas; satellite-linked; equipment and premises owned by other institutions)

+/- 100 Programme-specific centres

(Includes 'small centres' geared to specific subjects with practical component; often in hospitals, etc. and 'work centres', specifically for engineering and technology; hired labs in industry, etc.)

IGNOU, like India I suppose, presents this strange mix of high-tech and low-tech, of organization and chaos. But what shines through is an enormous pragmatism. IGNOU uses satellite extensively, and is making increasing use of online education, but there is never the sense that either is used because it is the thing to do or the latest trend. Almost all the academics I spoke to said: 'If it works, it serves our purpose, we will use it'. This attitude is perhaps symbolized best by a picture that confronted me while I was there. Directly in front of IGNOU's state-of-the-art media centre was the scaffolding for a huge structure being constructed for graduation. The scaffolding wasn't made from metal, but consisted of saplings being tied together by pieces of sisal!

This lack of reverence for the 'trendy' seems to run deeper. While IGNOU recognizes the need for learner involvement and interactivity, and is certainly up-to-date with current educational debates, many academics emphasized to me that their context 'perhaps' was not appropriate for implementing many of these ideas. This is reflected in that:

Many courses are strongly discipline-based and surprisingly didactic. Learners, one academic told me, 'need to know the basics before they can discuss things intelligently'. So, for instance, their mathematics education course focuses strongly on basic mathematical knowledge, rather than on, as the same academic put it, the 'trendy stuff the UK can afford to do given the entry knowledge of their students'.

Video-conferencing via satellite operates largely as a showcase through which good lecturers and experts in the field lecture to students. While the facility for student questions is built in, I was told it isn't used much. The academic told me that to 'pretend' that this medium was interactive was 'wrong'. He suggested it should be used to its strength, namely presenting a good show!

But the heart of delivery is still print, with audio and video back-up (each year almost a thousand videotapes and audiocassettes are produced), tutorial discussions, and work-based practicals. Practicals - used particularly in programmes like rural surgery, nursing, computers, engineering, sciences, and teaching - must make up 25% of the credits in these courses and are compulsory. Radio broadcasts are also used extensively in support. IGNOU is currently experimenting with online education: all business courses and most computer courses are offered by this means.

All programmes function around a basic three-year, ninety-six credit, degree. Each credit is equal to thirty student-study hours, each degree generally comprises twelve modules of eight credits each, which translates into 2,880 hours of study time. This can be done over a maximum of eight years.

IGNOU teaches all its formal courses in English, despite the multilingual nature of Indian society. Non-formal courses, however, tend to teach in the language of the region in which the course is being taught. In principle, though, IGNOU tries to limit the number of languages it uses.

Despite its size, IGNOU offers a surprising degree of openness and flexibility, although, as I was told, this is a new phenomenon. IGNOU now admits students 365 days a year. Admissions are done through regional centres and downloaded hourly to headquarters. Materials are delivered to students within fourteen days through regional centres. IGNOU makes use of a variety of distribution means, from the post office, through trucking companies to private couriers.

This kind of openness runs through the examination system too. Scheduled examinations are held twice a year at regional centres, but students can volunteer to write when they feel they are ready. If no progress is demonstrated in two years, however, then registration lapses. This, the registrar told me, is a means of concentrating the minds of part-time learners. Examinations are marked regionally - by part-time staff - and moderated centrally. Students may also request 'on-demand' examinations. These can only be written on Sundays at regional centres if a good excuse is offered. The costs are charged to the student.

Online examinations are increasingly used for foreign students. While I was there, a student working at the Indian Embassy in Washington wrote an examination in this way. It was written under supervision in Washington. Questions were downloaded from Delhi every hour, and only once the student had returned his answer. Again, students pay for this flexibility: the costs are charged to the student.

In other ways, IGNOU is quite restrictive, but justifies this in terms of maintaining quality. All examination question papers - across almost all programmes - must test the following:

·50% test of 'objective' knowledge;

·25% test of learners' ability to express themselves; and

·25% test of learner ability to apply knowledge.

It was emphasized, though, that this was a guide and that academics could provide convincing arguments as to why examinations should not be structured in this way. I was also told that all courses were assessed on the basis of coursework - which included practical work - and so the seemingly strong emphasis on content knowledge did not reflect the balance in the overall assessment 'package'. In fact the academic audit - which has to be held in each course at least once every six years - makes its judgement of course quality in terms of the degree to which there is congruence between assessment practises and course goals, and in relation to developments the field. The audit includes an expert reading of all courses and an assessment of assignments and examination scripts. Assessors are always drawn from outside the university.

I spent too little time at IGNOU to make a full evaluation of the place. On a brief impression, though, it is impressive and definitely an institution from which South Africans could learn. Despite IGNOU's size, there is frequent reference to the need for quality assurance. There is a strong belief that 'relevance' and 'massification' are not necessarily opposed to quality. This possibly explains IGNOUs' lack of reverence for technological or educational trends in the West. The attitude to high tech, or to learner-centredness, for instance is 'does it work in India? Does it improve our students' learning?' But any study of IGNOU must include a length of time at regional and sub-regional centres because, in a sense, those are the many hearts of this interesting and vital organization.