The history of Karnataka State Open University goes back to 1969 when it started as the Institute of Correspondence Course and Continuing Education (ICC&CE) under the University of Mysore. In fact, the University of Mysore initiated efforts in carrying education to the common people outside the campus, way back in the 1920s, with its extension lectures and publication of a variety of booklets in easy Kannada as well as English (by the Prasaranga). The university also became a pioneer in the area of adult education, with its introduction of continuing education programmes, in 1940, to meet the special needs of focus groups of adults, for continued learning. Apart from arranging graded lectures for the masses in small towns and publishing packages of support literature, it set up a broadcasting unit for the purpose of adult education at Akashavani, under the stewardship of Prof. M.V.Gopalaswamy during the earliest days of broadcasting in this region. The university also opened evening classes in a constituent college in 1965, to meet the needs of the students already engaged in full-time work, and selectively relaxed age and educational requirements for admission to the various courses there. Thus, the University of Mysore, as a forward-looking community of scholars and educational thinkers, created equal and enough opportunities for educating the under-educated and under-privileged in a non-formal way, much before the formation of the ICC&CE as its distance education unit. The basic principles of distance education, in fact, figured in most of the measures the university undertook in the past, and formal and informal methods existed here side by side for long, freely enriching each other.