DETC, the Distance Education and Training Council, is the USA-equivalent to ODL QC. Like us, they are independent of government and yet enjoy the informal support of both government and of the sector they accredit.

Accreditation is more complex Stateside. There is a national dimension, through CHEA and other CHEA-supported accrediting agencies (such as DETC), regional and state-specific dimensions, and subject-specialist accrediting agencies. This, together with regional variations, a relative freedom (at least compared to this country) to award degrees, issues raised by the new technologies and the growing scope and extent of distance education, meant inevitably that some of the conference centred around recent detailed, and occasionally somewhat parochial, issues in accreditation, on changes in the legal framework; and in the rules and policies of of the main regional and subject-specialist accrediting agencies.

But not all. The overall theme, one very familiar over here, was partnerships: between providers, providers and accreditors, or amongst accreditors, between financiers and providers or between providers and their clients.

Alongside that ran a number of familiar tensions: between self-regulation and external control; or between educational and commercial values.