Distance Education and Human Resource Development:Undergraduate Learners’ Perception towards Employability

Ashok Gaba
Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education, IGNOU, INDIA

Santosh Panda
STRIDE, IGNOU

Ashok Sadhwani
Distance Education Council, IGNOU

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     Last modified: October 15, 2006
     Presentation date: 11/02/2006 11:45 AM in NT Portland A
     (View Schedule)

Abstract
Human resource development in developing counties like India is imbalanced with respect to almost all kinds of social and economic aspects. There are disparities in terms of quality and standard of higher level of education, as well as the level of the educational attainment of different segments of the population. The quality of education and therefore of the labor force is a very important consideration in the context of human resource development. Distance education is considered to have significant influence on the quality of human resources in very many diverse ways including spreading necessary awareness among those whom such awareness might help, e.g. the large number of uneducated people, particularly women and also making available vocational and life skills to its clients.

In any distance education system, the learners (and therefore the graduates) hold the key in so far as the study of the effect of perception of the value of degree on programme completion, learner satisfaction, and future employment is concerned. This paper reports the findings of a study on the perceptions of bachelor level arts and computer science graduates towards programme choice, facilitation and individual perception of the value of their undergraduate degree.