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Franchise model elicits 76 applications

TIRUCHI: Bharathidasan University has received 76 applications from various parts of Tamil Nadu as a response to its initiative to engage franchisees for offering its Centre for Distance Education programmes.

The university has been offering distance education programmes on its own by remitting rent to the personal contact programme centres for utilising infrastructure and laboratory facilities and providing remuneration to faculty members. The university is in the process of inspecting the facilities of the franchisee applicants.

The condition under the new system, in vogue in other universities, is that the applicants must either be affiliated colleges or should have a tie-up with established higher educational institutions for offering the programme on the basis of 60:40 revenue sharing between the university and the franchisee respectively.

The quality parameters that the franchisees were expected to conform to would be determined on a continuous basis by vigilance squads constituted by the university, Vice-Chancellor M. Ponnavaikko told reporters on Tuesday. An incentive mechanism introduced under the franchisee system would serve as a motivation for enhancing enrolment phenomenally. The current strength of students under the distance education stream enrolled with 11 personal contact programme centres was about 13,000, including nearly 5,000 admitted during the current year. These centres would also continue to function.

The university would conduct examinations only in designated centres so that students did not take up the examinations in the distance education centres.

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