Page 334 - Universitas Terbuka Center of Excellence In Asia 2010 and The World 2020 (A Journey Towards a Leading Open and Distance Education Institution 1984-2008)

improve competence and competitiveness is now a major theme and one of
important objectives to be achieved by any government or society in the world.

Program of distance education makes it possible for people to keep learning and
developing new knowledge .

Even though developed countries have had universal access and education

for all , with more than half of school-aged population actively participate in
higher education , this kind of condition poses a great challenge for developing

countries . Developing countries faced many obstacles due to limited resources
and government's reduced funding for higher education. This problem may get

worse in the future because higher education sector should share public funding
with education sector, and other development sectors which also need public

funding. Each developing country has its own public policies and development
priorities , and education sector, especially higher education, does not always get

serious attention or be in high priority in the government's list of priority.

The pressure to realize higher education for all does not necessarily mean
that the system of higher education and number of higher education institutions

can be developed without limit. It cannot be done because the level of
government's public funding tends to decrease, and higher education institutions

become more dependent on clients' contribution . Distance higher education
institutions become a rational choice which is naturally integrated in the

mainstream of higher education system as an answer to the challenge to realize
higher education for all.

The system of open university, in which some universities have developed

into mega universities with the capacity to accommodate hundreds of thousand
and even millions of students, is an appropriate system to realize universal

access to higher education . The system of distance education makes it possible
to improve quality which is in reverse proportion to cost. In the face-to-face

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