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Background Education is a cultural pursuit concentrating on the appropriate training of human beings. Like other truths of existence it is one of the values desired for their own sake. Dr. S. Radhakrishnan says: "The purpose of all education is to provide a coherent picture of the universe and an integrated way of life" and this "cannot be a collection of distracting scraps but should be a harmony of pattern." Rabindranath Tagore follows up the argument in another context when he says: "It is by education that our reasoning faculties have to be nourished in order to allow our mind its freedom in the world of truth, our imagination for the world which belongs to art and our sympathies for the world of human relationships." These ideals which have been held dear by educationists from the days of Upanishads to the present times have yielded results not only in terms of mass education, mass motivation and mass enlightenment but also in terms of the flourishing of individual personality. The great Indian nation came to a new adulthood in 1947. A silent revolution has been taking place for the last five decades. The multilateral spheres of industry, agriculture, education, political and social sectors of individual and national life are in a state of flux with ever-changing hues giving no signs of permanence. In the field of higher education, this revolution has resulted in a vocal yearning for a better life through equal opportunities in the context of the new egalitarian pulls and pressures. While we profess to give equal opportunities to all who desire and deserve an improvement in their educational lot, the set-up of the society is such and the opportunities are so few that the clamour continues and is vociferously heard in political rallies, mass congregations and platforms of public opinion. In the sphere of education at the higher level, the number of colleges has increased manifold in the last fifty years and so has the population. The increase in the number of institutions of higher education or the number of seats in these institution has, however, not kept pace with the increase in the ever-growing long queues of candidates eligible for admission to various courses. For educationists and planners there were two ways to get out of the impasse. They could choose to curb the tendency of eligible candidates to join institutions of higher learning by tightening up admission rules and other criteria, thus debarring a great number of those who deserve but cannot get a seat in a course of study. This naturally would result in a vast section of legitimate aspirants for higher studies remaining outside the portals of a University - condemned to their routine life-patterns and careers which they chose not because they wanted them but because of the relentless socio-economic compulsions which made them give up their studies after their school. The other way was a novel one - to provide higher education to the very doorstep of these aspirants spread over the large land mass of India. Instead of the thirsty coming to the well, to translate an Indian idiom, the well walked up to the thirsty ! Some experimentation was done with the first alternative. Water-tight rules were made by universities to discourage a large percentage of those who, otherwise, were eligible in every respect to claim age of those who, otherwise, were eligible in every respect to claim admission to a course. This is the usual norm in case of science courses and professional studies where, naturally, for want of laboratory and other facilities, the number could not be allowed to swell to disproportionate dimensions. Correspondence studies as a form of distance teaching was the other alternative. It began not merely as a necessity but as the sure panacea for the various ills connected with what has been called "a spread of education at an explosive speed, at all-levels, and in all directions."
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