ABSTRACT
The West German FernUniversitat, based in Hagen, was founded in the mid 1970s and admitted its first 1,360 students in the academic year 1975–76. From the beginning, women have been extremely underrepresented among the FernUniversitat's student population, both absolutely—less than 25" of the students are women. Frequently the reason for this low percentage of women students is assumed to be the limited range of subjects available at the FernUniversitat and the fact that these subjects are considered more attractive for men than for women. Economics at the FernUniversitat comprises both political economy and business administration. Students who want to earn a degree in education at the FernUniversitat seem to be interested in social science subjects. The proportion of students not aiming for a degree is fairly high in mathematics and in electrical engineering. Apart from actual distribution of respondents in different degree programmes, findings in this phase of the study include impressions gained from open-ended questions rather than statistical analysis.
