1 Social Science Education in Open Universities

This is an inquiry into the nature of the student needs and knowledge in the distance education and the lifelong education that is being provided in the social sciences. What kinds of university learning in the social sciences do students enrolled in distance education and lifelong education courses at Open Universities want? Two somewhat ambiguous explanations can be used to answer this question. The first is that students need to acquire professional knowledge, and the second is that they wish to master the liberal arts and acquire bildung knowledge in the social sciences. In the university social science education, it may be essential to investigate scientific problems and to acquire professional knowledge. The relation between two kinds of knowledge needs to be stressed: as students needs more professional knowledge, the knowledge itself generally must become more integrated. Sometimes professional knowledge, which the social sciences generates in large quantities, is liable to diverge in fragments, and this fragmentary knowledge often creates a state of complexity and uncertainty which we cannot understand. When this occurs we must know well enough and have the talent to piece together the fragments of knowledge. We must keep the essence of the scientific knowledge in sight, integrating the fragmentary knowledge. It is important for us to synthesize the pieces of professional knowledge and reconstruct the meaning of the knowledge in the social sciences.