Through its partnerships with a range of institutions worldwide, The Open University (OU) validates awards which have parity of esteem with awards offered throughout
The OU's validation activity, which supports the University’s mission to widen access to higher education, is managed by Open University Validation Services (OUVS). We currently validate almost 300 programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level and to date over 107,000 have achieved an OU validated award.
Key Principles of Institutional Approval and Validation
The OU's approach to institutional approval and validation is based on the following key principles:
- Establishing a partnership between The Open University and the approved institution, in order to enable the institution to offer programmes leading to Open University validated awards.
- Providing a supportive framework within which approved institutions take responsibility for the day-to-day quality assurance and management of their own academic programmes.
- Using groups of experts from academic institutions, the professions, the business community and other appropriate organisations to make peer judgements about the quality of institutions and the learning programmes that they offer.
For more information about institutional approval, programme validation and our formal enquiry process, please click on the links below
