New Delhi: The School of Open Learning will provide a 100 per cent fee-waiver to female students who secure an 8.5 Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) in the current academic session 2024-25, its director Payal Mago said on Monday.
The fee waiver will be provided in the next academic session, she said while addressing the 62nd Foundation Day Ceremony of the School of Open Learning (SOL) here.
Mago also announced a call centre will be started by the SOL to address students' queries. A skill centre will also be made operational for upskilling students to make them job-ready, she added.
The entire fees for the coming year will be waived for all female students of SOL who get 8.5 CGPA, Mago said.
"SOL is a self-sufficient institute. Despite not taking any assistance from the government, it has given scholarships to poor students with an amount of Rs 2 crore in the last academic session," she said while making the announcement.
Attending the event, Delhi University vice-chancellor Yogesh Singh lauded SOL, saying that its students occupy important roles in society.
"Sixty per cent of chartered accountants (CAs) in Delhi are SOL students and many lawyers, civil servants, teachers and politicians have also been students of SOL," he said.
Started in 1962 with 900 students and two streams -- humanities and commerce -- the School of Open Learning currently has about four lakh students in more than 17 courses, he said, adding that around 1.80 lakh students are enrolled in SOL's BA programme alone.
The vice-chancellor said that the syllabus and examination pattern of SOL are the same as the regular one, and only the method of teaching is different. "The boundaries of open and distance education are limited to NCR, whereas now through online education we can reach out to the entire globe," he added.
The event was attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, among other dignitaries.