Vocational education and training is primarily aimed at people who are working or already have relating qualifications; by comparison, distance education and open universities are more friendly to those who do not plentiful time or access to a higher education or certain qualifications. When constructing nations’ adult education system, the governance should ensure the overall framework contains distance education offered by qualified institution or college and open university facing various education needs. For instance, according to the World Bank, Anadolu University in Turkey reaches more than 500,000 distance students, making it the largest university in the world for a long time. The university was founded in 1981 as part of a major restructuring of the higher education system in Turkey.
Its mission is to provide distance lessons to Turkish citizens. In 1983, it had nearly 30,000 students in business and economics and made the university an immediate success. In 2000, about 34% of students in the two-year program graduated in two years, and about 23% of students completed four-year programs in four years.
The vast majority of students enrolled at Anadolu University were adults working full-time or part-time. The distance education offered by Anadolu University has made post-secondary education an option for many people in Turkey who do not have access to higher education. (Nilsson and Nyström, 2013)In United States, a series of researches were accomplished by the Sloan Consortium (Allen & Seaman 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007). From the research, about 85% of public universities consider online education critically important for their long-term academic strategies, compared to about 50% for private institutions. The faculty at public universities more recognises the value of online education than their peers in private universities and public universities have enrolled more than 2 million students in online courses.
In 2000, the United States Department of Education noted that the number of higher education distance learning courses had increased. In addition, the Internet had been the medium of choice for most institutions offering distance education. The use of interactive video remained about the same during this period, suggesting that most of the distance learning growth was related to the use of the Internet. Online and traditional courses tuition were the same at 77% of institutions, and most institutions did not charge extra fees for distance learning courses. According to the US Department of Education, distance education was considered by nearly 90% of higher education institutions with more than 10,000 students. At the university level, it is reported that enrollment in distance learning nationwide is in the high six-digit range.
This includes participating in courses offered by traditional universities and those offered by distance learning universities.