ABSTRACT
Increasingly, efforts to promote educational opportunity and lifelong learning are confronted by high costs and the need for new efficiencies in education and training. The optimism that characterised massive investments in education in recent decades has gradually been displaced by the political will to control spending as deficits rise and by disillusionment with what are often perceived as unresponsive educational institutions. In this climate, politicians and institutional leaders are seeking new structures and new techniques, spurred on by rapid developments in communications technologies which seem to promise rosy new horizons for the future.
