Convocation ceremony of PU correspondence school concludes

The third Annual Convocation and 43rd Annual Prize Distribution Function of University School of Open Learning (USOL), Panjab University (PU), concluded on last Tuesday 29 March with great fanfare.

As many as 38 meritorious students received the degrees during the convocation. A large number of students received prizes and many amongst them were girls. Prizes were awarded for academic excellence, creative writing, public speaking and recitation.

Since 1971, USOL has been catering to all sections of the society and has as many as forty courses which includes eighteen post-graduate, eight undergraduate and many professional and certificate courses. USOL now has more than 22,000 students on its rolls.

Padma Shri recipient, PU Gyan Rattan Awardee and a former Vice-Chancellor of GNDU, Amritsar, Professor JS Grewal delivered the convocation address. In his address, he traced the illustrious history of the open and distance learning systems at both the national and international levels.

Addressing the convocation, PU Vice Chancellor, Professor Arun Kumar Grover, said, “The optimum use of technology and the introduction of state of the art facilities would certainly double the number of students enrolled for USOL. The open learning was the need of the hour and it could enable the peer group of open learning students to interact in a healthy way.”

Founder Vice-Chancellor of the Central University of Punjab, Professor Jai Rup Singh was the Chief Guest at the annual prize distribution function.

Professor Jai Rup Singh described USOL as a Mini University catering to various needs of different sections of society.

He analyzed the connecting links between the rise in population, the increase in the number of colleges and universities but the decline in the quality graph of education.

He traced this decline to the decreasing grant from the state and the rise of commercial centres of education run by private managements.