Distance Teaching Universities as Promoters of Social Equality and Social Accountability

Abstract

The autonomous fully‐fledged distance teaching universities (DTU's) that have been established since the early 1970 ‘s in Europe and in other parts of the world, and have been shaped to a great extent on the leading model of the Open University of the United Kingdom, were by their very nature designed to promote social equality and to enhance social accountability in higher education. The major goals on their agendas were to widen access to higher education, to reach out to potential students wherever and whenever they wished to study, to provide high quality learning experiences, to reduce the costs of university education, and to be responsive both to societal demands and to market trends. This article briefly describes the main policies, mechanisms, and measures that the DTU's adopted in order to achieve their goals and concludes with the implications and lessons that might be derived from the experience of the DTU's as to the planning and policy formation of higher education systems in the future.