The College of Distance Education (formerly Centre for Continuing Education), was established in 1997 and upgraded to a college status on 1st August 2014. There are currently three academic departments including that of mathematics and science, business studies and education studies.

The objectives for establishing the College of Distance Education (CoDE) were to provide opportunities for people to pursue higher education; train more professional teachers for all levels of Education in the Ghana Education Service; raise the professional competence of serving teachers and personnel of the Ghana Education Service, as well as accounting and management personnel in civil/public service, commerce and industry. More importantly, the CoDE aimed at providing opportunities for applicants who, even though they qualify for admission, fail to enter the conventional University system due to constraints in physical facilities.

The Centre started with an initial student enrollment of 750 in 2001, using the print-based delivery mode with nine learning Centres in nine regions. The CCE operates a dual-mode system. With this approach, the managers of the programmes ensure that there is no disparity in teaching and assessment between the conventional system and the distance learning system. In view of this, modules used by the distance education students are written by the lecturers of the conventional programmes. These lecturers set quizzes, assignments, examinations, and also responsible for grading students’ examination scripts.

CoDE currently runs programmes in education and business leading to the award of a diploma, post-diploma and master’s degree. Presently, there are 69 Learning Centres across the country, offering twenty-seven (27) programmes in Education, Business, Science, Tourism and Hospitality Management. As at 2014/2015 Academic Year, there were 36,313 students enrolled in all the 27 programmes run by the College.