COST-EFFECTIVE, EQUITABLE AND FLEXIBLE HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING IN BANGLADESH

This paper examines how this mega-university offers increasing access to cost-effective, equitable and flexible higher education by analyzing data from primary and secondary sources, identifies challenges impacting the continued growth of enrollment in distance education, and outlines opportunities for increasing access to higher education through scaling of distance initiatives. For pedagogic delivery, BOU uses both the conventional face-to-face tutorial system based on print module and electronic learning technologies such as CD, audiovisual cassettes, and radio and TV broadcasts. It revealed that BOU education is flexible, cost-effective, and insensitive to gender and geography and of standard comparable to that of the conventional universities. The reasons behind the success and cost-effectiveness of BOU programs were; BOU has access to any government and non-government infrastructures and resources without any cost or with nominal costs and can engage specialists from any institution for tutoring with a small honorarium