Join us on our journey

The ability to adapt to changing environments has been the hallmark of our success over 100 years. We believe that Open Colleges better reflects a number of important changes in the education sector – particularly in the emergence of an open learning community. Open Colleges also responds to students’ desire to belong to an education institution.

We believe that Open Colleges captures a number of important aspects of our heritage. The use of ‘Open’ reflects our unparalleled reputation in Australia for delivering highly flexible and accessible courses. At the same time, ‘open’ learning is increasingly being used to describe both distance and online learning. The adoption of Open Colleges reflects our evolution into a provider of integrated distance and online courses.

The use of ‘Colleges’ also highlights our heritage as an education institution, providing students with access to a community of learning. Our reputation over 70 years was built on the International Correspondence Schools (ICS) name. Our new name represents an important evolution in our history – from School to College. Our expanding portfolio of nationally accredited courses also fit better in a ‘College’.

In July 2011 we launched a new corporate identity for Cengage Education. This included a new logo. This new logo also forms part of the Open Colleges identity. The new logo has been designed to reflect lifelong learning as well as an interlocking ‘O’ and ‘C’. The warm green colour palate palette was selected to reflect our Australian heritage and openness. However, in reality, we just liked it!

Cengage Education currently has four Faculties and a number of Schools within each Faculty. Each of our courses is aligned to a School and Faculty. Up until now, these structures have only been used internally and, as such, have not been visible to students.

Moving forward, these structures will be replaced by a number of discipline-specific Open Colleges. For example, students in our accounting courses will now belong to the Open College of Accounting and Finance. Clickfor a full list of the individual Open Colleges and their associated courses. All of the individual Open Colleges will clearly be part of the Open Colleges Group.

Over time, you will notice that we will be launching individual Open College websites. We will increasingly promote our courses under both the Open Colleges and individual Open College names. However, in terms of your studies, you will continue to receive your learning materials and access your trainers and assessors in the same way. There will be no material changes to OpenSpace.

We will be actively promoting our new name and identity to our industry partners to ensure that your Open Colleges qualifications continue to be recognised and respected by industry.

The new name will not have any impact on your studies. You will continue to study in the same course, retain the same student number with the same trainers and assessors and use the same learning materials. Over time you will notice some improvements as we continue to invest in enhancing our learning materials and online learning resources, developing new cutting-edge courses and launching improvements in our online learning platform – OpenSpace.

At a practical level, we will start communicating with you as Open Colleges. However, rest assured that all our current phone numbers and email address will still be operational. We will be progressively rolling out initiatives that will give you an opportunity to engage with our new name, including new Open College specific blogs and forums and new student cards.

In some cases, Cengage Education offers courses in partnership with other training providers – such as the Australian College of Journalism, International Child Care College and Integrated Care & Management Training. In these cases, you will still continue to study your course with us in the same way and at the successful completion of your course you will receive a testamur and transcript from the partner provider. You will also have the benefit of being associated with the relevant Open College. More information is provided in the brand intro.

Click here for a full list of the current courses promoted under each Open College.

We will officially be changing the company name on 4 October 2011. Shortly after this we will be changing the Cengage Education logo to Open Colleges on the website, our learning materials and Open Space. For the next six months, the Open Colleges logo will include ‘Formerly Cengage Education’.

We understand that some students may wish to graduate with a Cengage Education testamur and transcript. This is still possible. At the point of graduation we will ask you whether you wish to graduate with a Cengage Education or Open Colleges testamur and transcript. You will be able to graduate with an Open Colleges testamur and transcript from 4 October 2011.

The new name will have no impact on your course. You will continue to access your learning materials and trainers and assessors in the same way.

Our telephone numbers will remain the same. We will be moving to new email addresses. However, please rest assured that our current email addresses will remain operational for some time. We will send you an email with our new email contact details in early October.

No, there will be no impact on the payment of your fees. If you have set up a direct debit with Cengage Education, this will be automatically transferred to Open Colleges. The bank account details remain the same.