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September 2004

Back to School

You're never too old for a distance-learning course

So it’s September again, when school and learning are writ large, even for those of us whose formal education ended quite a number of years ago. If the piles of crisp exercise books and rows of shiny pencils currently on display at stationery stores across town has put you in the mood for learning, but full-time study is not a viable alternative, read on.

There are a number of options for people who wish to gain new academic qualifications on a part-time basis. The best-known of these is probably the Open University. This UK-based distance-learning university was founded in 1969 and today offers part-time courses in more than 450 subjects: IT and computing, business and management, science and arts and design, to name just a few. Some courses are as short as eight weeks, others continue over a number of months. The OU accepts students of all ages and applicants need no previous qualifications to start an undergraduate course. A list of courses can be ordered either by post (contact the OU representative in southern Germany, Matthew Hawkes, at Tel. [089] 66 08 65 83), or you can find the information online at www.open.ac.uk/firststep. The system for acquiring a qualification at the OU is based on modules, each worth a certain number of points. So, to gain a BA (Honors) in Business Studies you will need to collect 360 points. This may be done by working through, for example, the following modules: Level 1, “An Introduction to the Social Sciences,” which takes approximately nine months and earns you up to 60 points. Then going on to Level 2, “Understanding Business Behavior,” which also takes nine months and is worth 60 points and so on. Each course is a self-contained unit. Depending on the courses and subjects you mix and match, you could get an OU certificate by taking one eight-month course, an OU diploma by taking two eight-month courses and a degree by taking six courses.

Once a student has registered with the OU, they will receive all the texts, CD-ROMs and TV and audio programs needed for their course and be assigned a tutor, who is there to assess work, and give guidance and advice. While OU courses are not cheap—the prices quoted online apply only to UK-based students, click the “European prices” on the relevant course description page or check with Matthew Hawkes for prices in Germany—OU diplomas and degrees are worth exactly the same as qualifications from conventional colleges and universities, in addition to showing that the student is disciplined and motivated enough to have completed a course of study “alone.”

An alternative to the OU is the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), which is a fully accredited Australian State University. Australia may sound distant, even for a distance-learning course, but the USQ has established a support and study center in Bretten, Baden-Württemberg (www.usq-bretten.de). The USQ courses are structured much like those at the OU (replace the term “modules” with “units”), though the range of subjects on offer is smaller. Other distance-learning colleges are the National Extension College (www.nec.ac.uk), a charity based in the UK, which offers GCSE and A-level courses—school-level qualifications—and the Open College of Arts (www.oca-uk.com), also with headquarters in Britain, which specializes in arts-related subjects, such as painting, design and calligraphy.

Even if you have never considered distance learning, reading through the array of subjects on offer can be a strong motivation to make this September the start of something new.

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