Chapter 7
Logo of LOI Campus: On a violet background there is a green lawn with three buildings on it, shaped like L, O and I. On the lawn in white letters it says 'Virtueel Educatief Centrum'. On top of it all in bright red is written CAMPUS
Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen

Category: Proprietary distance training institute

Country: Netherlands

Location: Leiden

Language of institution: Dutch

Address: Leidsedreef 2,
2352 BA Leiderdorp.
Telephone; 003171-5451911
http://www.loi.nl
 
 

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen at Leiden in the Netherlands enrols over 100,000 adult students annually. It is generally known as Loi

Official status

LOI's official status as a training provider in the EU is that it is a training company BV (Besloten Venuootschap) founded in 1923 and registered in the Netherlands. It also contains a university-level foundation (Stichting) called the LOI Hogeschool (The LOI Polytechnic ) founded in 1996.

If one excluded Charkov Beheer BV, nearby in Nijmegen, it is the European Union's largest proprietary provider of VET at a distance , and is one of the six providers of distance education and training (VET) in the European Union which has been identified by the Voctade study as enrolling more that 100,000 students per year:
Charkov Beheer Nijmegen  Netherlands 650000
CNED  Poitiers France  400,000
UNED  Madrid Spain  180,351
OUUK Milton Keynes UK  165,231
CIDEAD Madrid Spain  113,291
LOI  Leiden Netherlands  107,500

DE providers with more than 100,000 enrolments

The status is described by the 1993 report on Open and distance learning in the Netherlands thus:

The traditional correspondence course is a typical example of distance learning run by private institutes. They offer a broad range of courses ranging from single subject courses to courses that serve as a preparation for state examinations for secondary school certificates. Institute that work correspondence courses, have to charge money for all their activities; they do offer tuition as otherwise customers will go to the competitors. Modern correspondence courses have applied the developments of communication technology by incorporating modern audio and video techniques in distance learning.

Institutes based on private initiatives emerged in the twentieth century, the first - PBNA and LOI - in the beginning of the century. Since the fifties their growth was enormous. In 1990 still 35 institutes were active with 237,501 participants. Correspondence courses remained by and large a matter of private education. The institutes are competitors in the market of open and distance learning institutes. Since 1973 their quality is assured by the inspection based on law; participants may be assured of their quality when, and if, the correspondence courses are recognized by the Ministry of Education. The requirement in the Act on recognized educational institutes may be seen as an alternative of a common code of good practice or standards.

Institutes in the Netherlands were fast to use new technologies to support their correspondence courses. Records were already in use in the thirties and forties. Support of radio cassettes became popular in the sixties. Correspondence courses supported by video tape recorders were introduced in eighties. Records and radio cassettes were used in the first instance to support language courses, firstly to enable students to hear the language they studied, and secondly in the case of cassettes to give to their teachers opportunities to correct students' active use of language. Video tapes are used for a broad range of courses, to explain, to demonstrate, and to provide a variety of teaching methods, thereby relieving the essentially monotone of work of individuals studying textbooks. Using these new techniques, the correspondence courses maintained an essential two-way communication between teachers and students; they maintained the tuition of students as an essential element of distance learning. (Hoeben: 1993)

Training provision: courses

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen offers over 350 courses from basic adult education to polytechnic degree courses. Students range from: The university level programmes from the Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen Hogeschool are in:

Training provision: statistics

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen informed the Voctade enquiry that it enrols 100,000 students per year in its distance training programmes and 7,500 in its university-level programmes. It was stated that the distance training enrolment was considered static and that the higher education offering was growing.

Training provision: finances

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen is privately owned and there is no government funding or subsidising. Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen brochures indicate that courses vary greatly in price with an average of about Ecu 370, with Ecu 1230 being cited as the fee for a year of the university level courses.

Course development policies

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen materials, whether printed course materials, publicity materials, CD-roms, video cassettes, floppy disks are produced to the highest international standards. Courses are developed by leading experts and edited at Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen .

Training provision: certification

The distance training offerings are mainly vocational with 75% of the 350 courses being for professional qualifications, 15% in languages and 10% leisure.

Student support services

The main aim of Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen is to prepare students for the examinations and prepare them to sit for the examinations.

Employment

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen provides employment for 1,800. The major categories are:  

Plans for the future

Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen faces the same constraints as other providers of distance training in the Netherlands. These problems were variously described to the Voctade enquiry by Leidse Onderwijsinstellingen and other experts in the Netherlands: On the other hand, regulatory and government policies have changed recently, with the government, if it is has a training shortage going, to the private provider to fill the gaps and offering the same accreditation as for the public provision.