ABSTRACT
Non-traditional or ‘open’ universities and colleges have been around long enough to become traditional. Many are regional, national and even global in the reach they seek and access they offer. And while many of these are still innovative, particularly in applying digital and distance technologies to the delivery of learning, open learning institutions have become large, complex, formal organisations. Perhaps inevitably, the structures and the imperatives of systems – the infra-structural means of education – have become distinct from and even predominant over the principles or ends of education which those systems were originally created to serve. Roles are separated and specialised. Policies, procedures, programmes and standards are created with emphasis on efficiency, uniformity and appeal to large, supposedly homogeneous markets. And authority is concentrated in the hands of administrators pre-occupied with systems functions.
