All the teaching is organized at local level. It is thus possible to take account of the participants' and businesses' possibilities of fitting the educational activities in at different times. The teaching may take place both in the daytime, in the evening, in the weekend and in the form of distance learning. The educational institutions are furthermore free to offer 'empty' study places in the fulltime courses with grants according to the Act on Open Education. It is thus possible to participate in open education even in those cases where the intake to a given subject is not big enough to form a class.
Open education confers the same qualifications as the corresponding courses taken in other ways.
Entire courses and single subjects offered under the open education scheme may be completed with a fully recognized diploma. The admission requirements are in principle the same as for the corresponding fulltime courses. It is the main rule that the educational institutions which can offer courses under the open education scheme are those which are already recognized to offer vocationally oriented instruction under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, i.e. vocational schools, universities, business schools, engineering colleges, colleges of education, adult vocational training centres, social and health schools etc. Under the open education scheme, the institutions can offer all or parts of the courses which they are already entitled to offer. The supply, including the number of study places, is determined by the individual institution itself.