Enrolment sounds straightforward.    To enrol on a course is to start it.

Or, rather, to agree to start.    It's the point when you and the provider agree that you will take the course.

And that has implications, particularly when buying from a commercial provider.    Enrolment may be a point of no return; a commitment to pay some or all of the fees.

With schools and universites there can be long admission procedures:  tests to take, interviews to pass, hurdles to overcome.

Application, admission and enrolment are three separate stages in an overall process, which can be separated by weeks or even months.

This can be true with a commercial provider as well.    But more often, admission and enrolment merge into one, and the gap between them and application can shrink to a matter of minutes.

Time for reflection, for both learner and provider, disappears.    All the more reason why the learner needs to be alert, and not to make assumptions that all education is the same.

There's another difference in distance learning.    To enrol means, literally, to go on the roll, that is to join the list of those on the course.

In face-to-face education that is fair enough.    In school they call the roll, or the register, every morning;   in school we know and can see and talk to the others who, like us, are on the roll.

In distance learning you may have no idea who else is "on the roll".    You may be the only one.   There may be no roll at all.

But then, it doesn't really matter.    With a good provider, the service you get will be the same whether there are five or five thousand enrolled on the course.

Its just another example of a word that made perfect sense, once upon a time, but has outgrown its origins and now carries overtones of meaning that are no longer appropriate.