New Delhi: The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), one of the world's largest universities, will be focusing on more foreign tie-ups in order to provide more quality education to students, Vice Chancellor M. Aslam said.

"IGNOU should get more international presence, so we will have more foreign tie-ups as we want to provide more quality education to large number of students. We are also trying to bring in faculty exchange programme," said Aslam.

IGNOU is operating in 43 countries across the world through 82 partner institutions.

The Universities of Berkley and Maryland in the United States have shown interest in faculty exchange programme with IGNOU, he said.

"Apart from this IGNOU will soon come out with a food safety lab. Already we have a certificate and diploma programme for food safety, we will soon start a master programme," he said after receiving award for best teaching practices at the India Today Aspire Education Summit 2012.

IGNOU, which started with two courses and 4,000 students in 1985, has evolved into one of the world's largest varsities by offering about 450 programmes. It now has over three million students on its rolls. IANS