Challenges in Distance Education in the 21st Century: With Special Reference to South Canara Region

Abstract

Distance delivery in higher education brought up with clear mission for over 150 years that, “Providing second chance students the opportunity to pursue academic or professional studies”. All over the world, distance mode of education is gaining a momentum and becoming more popular than conventional education. Distance learning is an excellent method of reaching the adult learner. Because of the competing priorities of work, home, and school, adult learners desire a high degree of flexibility. The structure of distance learning gives adults the greatest possible control over the time, place and pace of education; however, it is not without problems. The open and distance learning system because of its inbuilt learner friendly features and flexibilities it has the potential to enable the learners to deal with the challenging and difficult situations and thus help them in reducing the stress as compare to their counterpart in the conventional system. Moreover, many of the students who have successfully completed their studies and have joined good organizations are not able to cope up with the challenging and difficult situations in day to day life.In present paper authors made an attempt to have detailed evaluation of distance education supported with systematic field work. Final interpretation and conclusion has been drawn using different statistical tools. Present paper would be used by researchers, post graduate students and other readers to explore and exploit further modified research opportunities in this field.