Indira Gandhi National Open University was established in 1985 with a budget of ?20 million, after the Parliament of India passed the IGNOU Act, 1985 & has continuously striven to build & serve an inclusive knowledge society through inclusive education.

Commonly known as IGNOU, the university is a distance learning national university located its main branch at Maidan Garhi, New Delhi, India.

IGNOU is run by the central government of India, and with the total active enrollment of over 4 million students, claims to be the largest university in the world.

Apart from teaching and research, extension and training form the mainstay of its academic activities. It also acts as a national resource centre and serves to promote and maintain standards of distance education in India.

The university started by offering two academic courses in 1987, i.e., Diploma in Management and Diploma in Distance Education, with a strength of 4,528 students.

Today, it serves education over 2.7 million students in India and other countries through 21 Schools of Studies and a network of 67 regional centers, around 2,667 learner support centres, and 29 overseas partner institutions.

At present, the university offers about 228 certificate, diploma, degree and doctoral programmes, with a strength of nearly 810 faculty members and 574 academic staff at the headquarters and regional centres and about 33,212 academic counselors from conventional institutions of higher learning, professional organizations, and industry among others.

The university is committed to quality in teaching, research, training and extension activities, and acts as a national resource centre for expertise and infrastructure in the Open and Distance Learning system.

IGNOU hosts the Secretariats of the SAARC Consortium on Open and Distance Learning (SACODiL) and the Global Mega Universities Network (GMUNET), initially supported by UNESCO.

IGNOU has started a decentralization process by setting up five zones; north, south, east, west, and northeast. The first of the regional headquarters, catering to four southern states, Pondicherry, Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep, is being set up in the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

The Ministry of HRD has entrusted the responsibility of developing Draft Policy on Open and Distance Learning and Online Courses to IGNOU.

VISION

To be a premier Open & Online University of the country with national and international recognition for its technology-driven quality higher education catering to the needs of learners & society guided by the core values of openness, flexibility, affordability, inclusiveness, lifelong learning & excellence".

MISSION

Expanding the reach of the University to achieve the targeted GER and include the unserved target groups including the SEDGs into the fold of higher education;

Strengthening the University's international presence;

Rethinking the processes of designing, developing and delivering an enhanced learning experience through technology-enabled teaching-learning methods;

Offering market-driven professional programmes of global standards for preparing the youth for global competitiveness and employability;

Promoting the development of holistic and multidisciplinary programmes & courses embedded with skills in all degree programmes to enhance environment sensitivity, human values, professional ethics, and employability quotient of the youth;

Developing academic programmes catering to the need of neglected regions and communities and engaging them in socially productive activities;

Strengthening industry-institution interaction for desing and development of curricula relevant to the higher education ecosystem for the mutual benefit and growth of industries and the university;

Fostering collaboration with the government / non-governmental organizations / research institutions to strengthen the learners' engagement with community development, research, skill development, employability etc;

Updating and gloabilizing the curriculum to keep pace with the changing requirements and relevance in global scenario;

Monitoring & maintaining strict schedules in the development, delivery and revision of programmes;

Enbaling mechanism for lateral entry and flexible exit options in the majority of the UG / PG Programmes;

Providing a high quality teaching-learning environment to independent learners capable of using online technologies with the required skills and competencies of a knowledge society;

Increasing the output of graduates with employable skills in both research and professional fields;

Incentivizing research both academic and systemic for quality improvement and better academic visibility;

Enhancing the quality of academic and sponsored research by promoting applied research, innovation, incubation and entrepreneurship;

Redesigning of learner support services at all levels and strengthening onlinesupport services to learners;

Introducing e-Office management and automation of human resources and financial management in the University to reduce humn intervention;

Providing continuous professional development and self-empowerment of academic and non-academic staff by inculcating motivation, teamwork and leadership;

Sensitizing and engaging the academic and non-academic staff with issues such as gender, environment and sustainability, social cohesion, national integration, human values and professional ethics, etc;

Attracting and retaining qualified and competent teachers, academics and non-academic stagf and boosting their morble to provie better services;

Institutionalizing quality assurance through monitoring and review the functioning of the University to promote outcome-based practices;

Encouraging alumni for contributing / giving back to the institution; and

Developing international visibility and recognition by increasing the University's ranking at the global level