GETTING ahead, going green and learning while balancing home and work life is the ideal solution for the environmentally aware who want to learn a new qualification to help with job prospects.

But is this work, education and environment balance possible? Thanks to research conducted by the Open University, we can now assess the environmental impacts of HE courses by campus-based and distance/open learning methods.

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The study, Towards sustainable higher education: environmental impacts of conventional campus, print-based and electronic/open learning systems, looked at 20 UK courses, a mixture of campus and distance courses, and covered travel, paper and print consumption, computing, accommodation and campus site impacts. The results were then converted into energy and CO2 emissions per student per 100 hours of degree study.

On average, part-time HE courses reduce energy and CO2 emissions by 60% compared to full-time campus-based courses, and distance learning courses involve nearly 90% less energy and 85% fewer CO2 emissions than the full-time campus courses.

The lower impacts of part-time and distance compared to fulltime campus courses is mainly due to a reduction in student travel and elimination of much energy consumption of students' housing, plus economies in campus site utilisation. Inherent to distance learning, of course, is the elimination of much staff and student travel. Further moves to online learning and greater use of e-methods offer huge potential environmental benefits, but also the continuing need for greater use of renewable sources for the energy needed to use these tools.

These environmental advantages are not confined to the Study-IT-Online but apply to other distance learning systems.

Part-time open learning with Study-IT-Online offers the flexibility and quality to those in work, or wishing to return to the labour market, to reskill and upskill in the course of their working life. And it needn't cost the Earth.