Open learning and consumer culture

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John Field

John Field Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland, examines in this article the relevance of consumer culture to open learning. Taking issue with some recent analyses of open and distance learning in the post‐Fordist context, he argues that there has been a fundamental ideological shift in many western countries towards regarding the citizen as consumer, and that open learning through its customer‐centred focus and its use of contemporary technologies, often associated withentertainment, is a strong promotional vehicle for such an approach.