A 77-year-old candidate appeared in MPhil/ PhD entrance examination at Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) Maidan Garhi campus in New Delhi.

The candidate Binay Kumar who came all the way from Patna to appear in the test has already finished postgraduate diploma in distance education (PGDDE) and master of arts in distance education (MADE) from Staff Training and Research Institute of Distance Education (STRIDE) at IGNOU.

Surprisingly, septuagenarian Kumar was not alone at the examination centre, there were about 10 more aspirants in 55-65 age group who turned up to take the entrance examination. But he was the eldest among all of them.

He has spent more than 30 years in a government job and retired from the service in 1994.
He worked as a research officer (statistics) in department of animal husbandry, Government of Bihar.

When asked about the driving force to appear for the test, he replied, “I had attended a conference of Asian Association of Open Universities (AAOU) held in Delhi in 1994 as a participant. After that, I realised that the theme of the conference was similar to my spiritual organisation which focusses on better life and education for all. That time only, I decided to pursue higher education which is a best mode to provide education to all sections of the society at affordable cost.”

“I want to study further because.It helps you maintain regularity and discipline in your daily life; apart from this I believe in lifelong learning process,” he adds.

His interest in higher education not only shows the importance of unique feature of open and distance learning (ODL) system but also demonstrates growing popularity of research degree programmes.