California's International Open University (IOU) was established as a non-campus university to provide distance and online learning programs to mature students worldwide, with the objective of facilitating for working adults the attainable goal of continuing education leading to higher degrees. IOU is one of the few of its kind actually based in the U.S. to provide students with master's degree opportunities directly through its offered programs; six such programs are today available, in fields including education, business administration, and engineering and technology. Each program is offered via distance learning and seminar support basis, ranging in duration from two to three years and open for student enrollment from anywhere in the world. The only entry requirement is a bachelor's degree or equivalent (or a minimum of 120 undergraduate-level semester credit hours) in the chosen program's specified discipline.
Based in the United Kingdom, the Open University (OU) is a world leader in the progressive movement of open admission and modern distance-learning policies. The U.K.'s largest student body university, OU boasts courses available and matriculants located worldwide in its institutional network. For postgraduates, it offers more than 50 master's degree programs, including English, education, psychology, myriad computing and technology master's qualifications, and an internationally accredited MBA from its own Business School. Generally, these programs require that applicants hold a B.A. or equivalent in their chosen discipline and demonstrate requisite skills; some, however, impose more stringent requirements or, conversely, allow for more flexibility, such as professional expertise in lieu of particular academic criteria. OU students have leeway to complete their master's per individualized timelines but are held to rigorous standards--including 180 credits from specific compulsory modules--to ensure their degrees once attained will be professionally acknowledged and valued.
The University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU) was founded in 1995 on the open-entry distance learning premise, with the particular objective of providing nationals with wider, alternative access to quality continuing higher and professional education. Fortunately, however, with OPOU's now-integrated advent of online tutorials, most courses--including its master's programming--are conducted primarily through digital media, today rendering them readily student-accessible on a global scale. Indeed, UPOU's 11 diverse master's degree opportunities (among them public management, development communication, and information systems) are delivered almost entirely in the university's online "distance education" model. Admission requirements typically consist of a B.A. in the applied-for discipline, related work experience, applicable standardized testing and high-level intellectual capacity, to be adjudged based on transcripts, references and interviews. Each program is coordinated around specialized curricula to equip students with necessary conceptual and practical skills for competence in their chosen professional fields.
The Open University of Israel (OUI) is likewise built on the digital age organizational structure of modern open and distance learning, its courses available across Israel and the world in service of continuing quality academic and professional development. Also likewise, OUI offers numerous graduate study programs leading to master's degrees and in this context imposes mandatory application standards in place of its open undergraduate policies. Students can pursue an OUI master's in six broadly specialized fields--among them, business administration, education and computer science--provided they fulfill the several admission-contingent conditions; the respective governing departmental committee reviews the obligatory documentation (B.A., transcript, resume) to determine degree candidates' admittance. OUI's programs operate via scrupulous coursework curricula, integrating research, scholarship, written product, workshops and presentations, and students must abide for completion by set time periods (typically, seven years or fewer). Finally, although each is conducted predominantly via computerized distance-learning modes, students are expected to attend in Israel several face-to-face faculty meetings.