An exemplary effort has been taken by the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) by announcing exemption of fees for its transgender students of all programmes. IGNOU announced on July 2 that transgender students will not have to pay any fee and all they have to do is to provide an identity proof to the university.
The initiative was announced by Vice Chancellor Ravindra Kumar during the 22nd Prof G Ram Reddy Lecture.
The university holds the lecture on July 2 every year in the memory of the founding Vice Chancellor of the university Prof. G. Ram Reddy. It invites eminent educationists and scholars to deliver lecture on higher education, especially in the open and distance learning domain.
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) VC M Jagadesh Kumar, who was the Chief Guest at the event, urged the teaching community to give precedence to quality of life rather standard of living.
Also present was former VC of Telangana’s Kakatiya University Y Vaikuntham. He advocated spending 6 per cent of the GDP on education.
"The government should give freedom and spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education. Main thrust should be to devise effective strategies to address the challenges to the growth of education in India and to realise the potential of the country’s demographic dividend as envisaged in the national education policy of 2016," said Vaikuntham.
