Expanding Higher Education for the 21st Century: How Can We Expand Open Learning?

It is a pleasure to be back in China at another AAOU conference. I am delighted to visit this beautiful province of Yunnan for the first time and I thank Professor Shao Nan and her colleagues at the Yunnan Radio and TV University for the warm welcome they have given us. It is a pleasure to congratulate our Chinese hosts, in Yunnan, in Shanghai, in Beijing and all over China on the tremendous energy that they are devoting to advancing the practice of open and distance learning through research, publication and technological innovation. As in so many fields of human endeavour today, China is showing the way for the world in pushing forward the frontiers of theory and practice