Anadolu University Distance Education System can reach its thousands of students not only in various provinces of the country but abroad as well. In the Open Education System, the bureaus are well and professionally designed to help students enrolled in the Faculty of Business Administration, Faculty of Economics, and Open Education Faculty without making them obliged to come to the Central Bureau.
When the Anadolu University Distance Education System was founded in 1982, it established bureaus in six cities where most students lived and a central bureau in Eskişehir in order to provide the best educational services to its 29.445 students. The Central Bureau is a unit established to allow information flow between the university and the bureaus and to offer support services. Since its establishment, the university had to open new bureaus because of the increasing number of students each year. Since 2007, 89 bureaus have been available for 1.100.000 distance education students in 81 cities and Nicosia (Lefkoşa). Factors such as high population and distance lead to the establishment of more than one bureau in big cities such as İstanbul and Ankara. Seventy-three of those bureaus are possessed by Anadolu University.
DES bureaus provide the following services to students enrolled in distance education system:
- Distributing Course Books
- Issuing Certificate of Student Status
- Suspending the Military Service of Students
- Issuing Transcripts
- Issuing Student ID Cards
- Dismissal
- Giving an Associate Degree Document, Associate Degree Diploma
- Giving Substitute Documents to Students Who Lost Their Bachelor’s and Associate Degree Diplomas
- Awarding Honor and High Honor Certificates
- Adjusting Student Information
The right of external transfer given to vocational school students and the right of second university given to undergraduate students and graduates of on campus programs have increased the number of students in the system in recent years. Bureaus carry out registration and registration renewal procedures of the students accepted to the Distance Education System owing to these opportunities. In addition to the services offered by the other bureaus, the Central Bureau deletes enrollments and sends any required/ necessary documents or transcripts of the students to the demanding institutions.
Since the use of computer systems was not as widespread as today between 1982 and 1993, bureaus drew up the documents of students according to the information provided by the Central Bureau.
In 1994, the bureaus began to offer faster services to students owing to computerization. All student information was transferred to computers in the bureaus.
The variety of services offered to students through the bureaus has increased since 1997 parallel to technological developments, and this allowed students to receive many services in cities they reside.