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A serious problem in South Africa is the existence of 2.8 million people we can refer to as NEETs. This term refers to youths between the ages of 18 and 24 years who are neither in employment nor in education or training in South Africa (Cloete and Butler-Adams 2012). This article argues for the institution of community colleges to fill the niche between colleges for further education and training and universities. This niche represents a model of higher education that has already internationally proven its value for steering NEETs into worthwhile careers. After a conceptual clarification of the term ‘Community College’ and an overview of its track record, it is argued that the South African context dictates for the model to be adapted in two ways. Firstly: a South African community college should fully utilise ICT (Information and Communication Technology) and offer education of a blended type. Secondly, as a result of this, the concept of ‘community’ needs to be redefined more broadly than has traditionally been the case with community colleges abroad.

Most practitioners in the field of flexible learning seem to be sufficiently aware of the importance of catering to the needs of their students. However, it appears that many are rather more conscious of the needs of the students as a group than as individuals per se. Others seem to be rather more concerned about the technology involved. After touching on the foundationalist and non-, post- or anti-foundationalist approaches to the problem of individualisation in flexible learning, the article discusses a number of guidelines for individualisation from a post-post-foundationalist perspective. This is followed by a section in which these guidelines are presented in practical terms. This outline of guidelines reveals that attempting to individualise from this perspective is no simple and straightforward matter, but that there might be practitioners in the field of flexible learning (open distance learning and blended learning) who already are following this approach as a best practice. A post-post-foundationalist approach to individualisation in flexible learning offers practitioners in the field a whole new vocabulary.