Open and Distance Learning, also referred to as Distance Education (DE) is an excellent means to provide the learning needs of lifelong learners.

If well managed, distance education can provide opportunity for the provision of efficient, affordable education to a large number of people that would otherwise be unable to fit in the inflexible education system that Uganda inherited from the colonial era.

There is indication that distance education may have been provided as early as 1728. In the Boston Gazette of 20th March 1728, Caleb Phillips, Teacher of the New Method of short hand, advertises that "......any persons in the country desirous to learn this Art, may, by having the several lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston" (Battenberg 1971).

An advertisement in English in "Lunds Weckoblad" No.30, 1833, a weekly published in the old Swedish university city of Lund, offers "Ladies and Gentlemen" an opportunity to study "composition through the medium of the Post" (Baath, 1980).

Another early attempt at organised distance education was made in England by Isaac Pitman who reduced the main principles of shorthand system to fit into postcards. He sent these to students, who were invited to transcribe into shorthand short passages of the Bible and send the transcription to him for correction, in the 1840's.

In 1843 the Phonographic Correspondence Society was formed to take over these corrections of shorthand exercises. It was the beginning of what was later to become Sir Isaac Pitman Correspondence Colleges (Dinsdale, 1953).

Organised distance education is assumed to have been introduced in Germany in 1856 by the Frenchman Charles Toussaint and the German Gustav Langenscheidt, who established a school in Berlin for Language teaching by correspondence (Noffsinger, 1926).

In Africa, the pioneer in this respect is the University of South Africa, UNISA, (originally called the University of Good Hope). Founded in 1873 as an examining body based on the model of the University of London, it started teaching at a distance in 1946. Unisa was established as a distance teaching university through a government decree of 1962.

It is one of the world's "mega Universities" with a student population of over 150,000, delivering internationally recognised Degrees by distance learning at affordable cost. There has been a sizable Unisa student population in Uganda. One of the first Unisa graduates in Uganda was Benedicto Kiwanuka (RIP), Uganda's first Attorney General and transition Prime Minister.

The founding of the British Open University in 1969 marked the beginning of a period in which degree-awarding distance teaching universities with full degree programmes, sophisticated courses, new media and systematic systems, cropped up in various parts of the world and confer prestige on distance education ( Rumble and Harry, 1982).

Since the 1970s, the image of distance education in several countries changed from one of a little respected endeavour to one of a publicly acknowledged type of education acclaimed as an innovative promise for the future. Unfortunately, in this respect, many Ugandans' attitudes about Distance Education are as backward as they were in Europe and America in the 1960s.

Adults with occupational, social and family commitments were the original target group of distance education. Distance education gave and gives gifted and hardworking people a possibility to study besides their job and other commitments, that would keep them away from the so-called "full time" university studies or even the now popular evening programmes, that have only managed to stretch the working class's day deep into the night, causing tremendous stress on families and individual learners.

A new target group has emerged during the last few decades: younger university students taking individual courses by distance study as parts of degree curricula based on conventional study. Distance education is a separate mode of education in its own right. It is affordable (much cheaper than full time or residential study) and allows those with no time or financial resources to obtain education, especially higher and career education.

To deal with this new reality, universities should look to other methods of instruction. Distance Education is a correct response to these challenges.

Makerere, for example is capable of increasing its intake to 60,000 students with students paying a fraction of what they pay if it embraces Distance Education.

Our struggling private universities can also get a new lease of life through the popularisation of DE. For practical reasons, Uganda's universities can adopt a dual delivery of learning programmes: partly by distance, partly full time, to reduce unnecessary pressures on resources like space, furniture and equipment.

Internationally, there is no difference between a degree obtained by full time study and that obtained by distance learning from an accredited university. Ugandan universities risk failure by continuing with their outdated ways in a changed world. The signs are on the wall for everybody to see.