The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), one of the world's largest open universities, will get Rs.91 crore from the union budget for the next fiscal.

IGNOU will get Rs.91 crore innthe 2010-11 fiscal, Rs.9 crore more as compared to the last year.

IGNOU provides education to over 2.5 million students in India and abroad. It has 61 regional centres and 2,243 learner support centres spread across 34 countries.

The varsity offers 3,500 courses in 323 academic spheres. IGNOU has been recognised as a Centre of Excellence in Distance Education by the Commonwealth of Learning, Canada.

Started with a vision of social inclusion and democratisation of education, IGNOU has a large number of socially and academically relevant programmes and a nationwide student support system. It offers state-of-the-art education through face-to-face teaching, webcasts, telecasts and video conferencing.