I will share with you, a few specific challenges that confront educational planners, policy makers and practitioners as they aspire to move away from high cost, elite, institution-centred provision to where the focus is very much student-centred, affordable and mass in nature, in a global context. In doing so, one invariably must consider the practice of distance education as an important option in any attempt at coupling mass education and low cost (this may or may not be so, but it is the perception) in most parts of the developing world.