Open university (concept)

Participants could continue to earn a living while they studied, could learn in any way they wished, and could sit their examinations without visiting Britain.

It had no students, instead setting academic standards and acting as an examination board for associated university colleges.

[5] In apartheid South Africa, it offered educational opportunities to all ethnicities, but students had to meet normal matriculation requirements.

[6] By the new millennium, around 400,000 students in 130 countries were taking its courses, and it had become one of the largest distance learning institutions in the world.

It aimed to widen access to the highest standards of scholarship in higher education; it uses a variety of methods for teaching, including written, audio and visual materials, the Internet, disc-based software and television programmes on DVD.

Its distance learning model provided higher education for those who had been excluded from the existing catholic establishments.