Open University

As the closest many people have come to the Open University is courtesy of the TV listings for impossibly intelligent-sounding programmes overnight on the BBC, it is somehow fitting that it was a television show that provided a sudden surge of course reservations in 2000. The previous year, a team from the OU had won University Challenge, beating Oriel College, Oxford, only to be accused by the programme's host, Jeremy Paxman, of fielding two "professional" quizzers. One, it transpired, had enrolled for a degree in classical Greek just to get on the team.

Putting aside the notion that a degree in classical Greek could he an easy route to TV stardom, it should actually come as no surprise that the OU often triumphs over more traditional universities - after all, it has a cohort of more than 200,000 students to choose from. It is the biggest university in the UK in terms of numbers; 22% of all part-time higher education students in the country are enrolled there.

So, there's more to it than bearded professors and complicated formulae, that much-parodied image of OU TV. Like any other university, it offers a good range of courses, undergraduate and postgraduate (more than 360 in total). Unlike any other university, it offers an unrivalled degree of flexibility to its students: how, when and where you study, and how long it takes you to get there is pretty much entirely up to you.

And - again, unlike other universities - prospective OU undergraduates need have no previous qualifications to he accepted on their chosen course. As the website puts it: "As long as we have a place available, it is yours." You do have to be 18 or over, although "over" is again a rather flexible concept - the oldest graduate was 94.

So why so easy? Rather like an open sporting tournament, the idea of the OU is to allow the wildcards to pop through: those who might have missed out on the higher education experience due to lack of opportunity or A-levels, or just being too damn busy working and raising a family to think about study until retirement looms, those who want (or need) to carry on working but are eyeing the extra letters after their name, those who fancy learning about a whole new subject just for the intellectual thrill of it.

They do it with the help of a range of learning materials and methods. Course materials (textbooks, tapes, software) are usually included in the fee, but on top there are those TV programmes, radio shows and web-based support, including virtual fieldtrips. And, lest "distance learning" sound a little too distant, a net-work of regional study centres and local tutors shoulder the personal bits: assessment, support, problem-solving. Inevitably, a lot of the motivation and persistence has to come from the student - there'll be nobody banging on your door to drag you off to a lecture hall - yet each year 70% of students successfully complete their course. As more than two-thirds of OU students combine their studies with full-time work, that's no mean feat.

The downside of all this flexibility, of course, is that it comes at a price. Fees are paid by the student and vary depending on what course is chosen and the support that comes with it (residential schools, for example). The average cost of a degree is £4,100, although there is some funding available for those on low incomes. There's the time factor, too - it takes an average of six years to get a degree through the OU. But the comparison perhaps should not be with 18-year-olds heading off to spend three years working fur a degree and into adulthood; the vast majority of OU enrollers are between 25 and 44, and they have jobs, families, lives already. And the OU can cope with that.

But to repeat - don't go looking for the Open University in our subject tables. The nature of the data means that they cover only full-time undergraduate courses. But while the OU won't be in there, that doesn't mean that it might not be the best way for you to study.