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| Photo: Telegraph.co.uk |
"With the eyes of the world about to be on London, and Olympic athletes starting to converge on the capital, it is not a bad time to reflect on a non-sporting activity at which London also excels – higher education." summarizes Telegraph.co.uk.
Not everyone who would like to study in London can afford to live in London, one of the most expensive cities in Europe, but thanks to distance learning, one of the unsung miracles of the computer age, people all over the world are in a position to flash a prestigious University of London degree at prospective employers.
The university was a pioneer in the distance learning field and started offering external degrees as early as 1858. Charles Dickens, when editing the magazine All the Year Round, hailed London as “the people’s university”.
It certainly contrasted favourably with the more exclusive, less innovative, worlds of Oxford and Cambridge, where the idea of acquiring a degree long distance would have been anathema.
To the ever-democratic Dickens, the appeal of the London distance learning model was that it offered “the young shoemaker who studies in his garret” the chance to further his education. In 2012, that young shoemaker might be a bored schoolteacher in Sydney, a pastry chef in Berlin wanting to train as commercial lawyer or a strap-hanging commuter in Toronto with dreams of being a brain surgeon. But his garret would probably still be a garret, albeit with a washing-machine and state-of-the-art television, and the same core educational principle – flexible off-campus learning – still holds good.
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Source: Telegraph.co.uk
