This report contains short descriptions of about 200 selected distance education institutions throughout the world. Most of the descriptions are based on questionnaires completed by members of the institutions as well as on corrections of and comments on a preliminary version of the descriptions. Descriptions contain some or all of the following information: institution name and address, ownership and type of institution, number of courses, educational level of courses, subject areas of courses, number of learners currently enrolled, relative importance of face-to-face contact, flexibility in pacing and teaching methods, media used for teaching, participants of course teams, local study centers, evaluation of courses and media, flexibility of curriculum, elements of two-way communication, media used in two-way communication, counseling, and tutoring, measures to reduce the nonstarter and dropout rates, type of continuous assessment, terminating of courses with examinations, average turnaround time for tutor's corrections and comments on assignments, types of items for the assignments, comments upon the assignments submitted, use of computers for correction and comments, success rate, and nonstarter rate. Countries represented are Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Finland, France, West Germany, Ghana, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Malawi, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Senegal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, United States, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. (KC)