Open universities are adult colleges and universities.
Open universities can be divided into six types: public, government-funded open universities; public, self-financed, not-for-profit open universities; private, for-profit Open universities; private, not-for-profit open universities; private open universities in general university alliances; and transnational, not-for-profit open universities.
Since the 1960s, the development of public open universities has spread rapidly around the world. In the next 30 years, the open education system with public open universities as the core has been unable to study on campus for various reasons. Providing high-quality open and distance education to people has played an important role in establishing equitable and inclusive lifelong learning societies in various countries.
With the development of online education, open and distance education are no longer the exclusive preserve of public open universities. Ordinary universities and private enterprises have also widely joined the ranks of distance education. Different types of open universities have begun to appear and develop rapidly. The market for distance education has been recalibrated.
With the rapid development of information communication technology and its widespread use in education, distance education has entered the third generation of online education from the first generation of correspondence education and the second generation of multimedia education. It’s called “modern distance education.” Judging from the data of the International Council for Open and Distance Education, which was established in 1938 and is the world's largest and most influential among open universities, the Open University has been a core member for a long time.