Page 55 - Universitas Terbuka Center of Excellence In Asia 2010 and The World 2020 (A Journey Towards a Leading Open and Distance Education Institution 1984-2008)

programs offered. The more the study programs, the more will be the number of
courses.

At the beginning of its establishment, UT offered four undergraduate study
programs of three faculties . For undergraduate program with credit unit loads of

144-160 credits, the number of courses was between 50 to 60. If it was assumed
that credit unit load of one course was from 2-4 credits, mathematically, the

number of courses for four undergraduate programs was around 200-240.
However, in fact, certain courses especially the MKDU cluster were similar to

almost all study programs so that the university only provided a set of MKDU
cluster courses for all study programs. Those conditions also applied for some

basic skill courses (MKDK) cluster. Also, courses from different levels but in the
same academic discipline would overlap. For example, some of the courses in

undergraduate program for elementary school teachers were also taken by
students of diploma Oil program for elementary school teachers. This would
reduce the number of courses. In addition, there were efforts to rationalize the

number of courses in order to increase efficiency and effectiveness in term of

cost. The UT has also encouraged the use of more and more courses by more
than one study programs. These efforts have been made since 2001 , and in 2004
~s a result, eight courses were developed together and used by various study

programs either in the same or different faculties (Universitas Terbuka , 2005 b) .

The development of courses in study programs from every faculty from 1991 to
2006 is shown in Table 12 to Table 15.
From the above explanation and tables as shown , it can be concluded that

the variety and number of courses of each study program always expand . This

condition has been caused by some factors , such as policies at the national
level , university and faculty levels, market demand, and also because of the
natural progress of the knowledge itself. This fact ind icates that in the future ,

courses will keep changing and expanding in terms of variety and number. This

33