ABSTRACT
As contemporary open and distance learning (ODL) enters its fourth decade and approaches organisational middle age, enthusiasm seems to be waning among some pioneering institutions for its original goal of extending educational opportunity to those who had been left out. The mantra, coined by the OU UK, to be ‘open as to people, places, methods and ideas’ now appears less often in open learning publications than references to customers, markets and cost-recovery. Many academic institutions that have recently adopted ODL see it as a means of capturing a niche market for its academic specialties, preferably by serving profitable, fully employed learners through advanced information technologies. As one critic puts it, ‘the implication is that choosing a particular university, following a particular regimen, will turn the student into a specifiable and identifiable product’ (Franklin, 1990). When ODL seems poised to be in the vanguard of what Tait (2000) terms ‘the marketisation of education’, it leaves the nagging question about the re-marginalisation of learners that are no longer sufficiently rewarding for institutions to serve. Fortunately, there are some new models offering flexible, responsive distance learning emerging from innovative organisations that are not part of the competitive academic ethos.
