History of the OU

David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science today presented a White Paper ‘Higher Education: students at the heart of the system’. The BBC reports that the Open University will offer courses through local further education colleges. 

In his reading of the White Paper the OU’s Vice Chancellor Martion Bean noted the ‘numerous positive references’ to part-time study, distance learning and to The OU. He was also encouraged by the material on widening participation and noted that David Willetts said in the Commons that ‘we think that The Open University can be one of the main beneficiaries of the new flexibility with the 20,000 extra places.’ 

This idea of a network was mooted in the early 1960s when the OU was being planned. Jennie Lee, however, took the view that the OU should take the form that it did. She felt that it was only by being independent that it could hope to operate to the highest academic standards. Soon after it was opened the OU allowed modules to be presented at colleges in the USA.  The 2011 White Paper seems to suggest that institutions, (possibly including further education colleges & private providers) which charge tuition fees of less than £7,500 can bid for 20,000 student places. Perhaps OU modules are to be sold to colleges? Who would validate the modules, be responsible for assessment and quality is not clear and the implications of a shift towards providing teaching materials for full-time and quite possibly face-to-face and young students have yet to be announced. The White Paper mentions the OU twice, once pointing out that it does ‘consistently well’ in thesurveyof student satisfaction (p37) the other time to suggest that there could be more bodies with a structuere such as that of the OU (p52).  (more…)

Many books and film portray students as wealthy, careless young men. For example, Bertie Wooster, a character who appears in the popular novels of P. G. Wodehouse, attended Magdalen College, Oxford. As the stories have appeared on the radio, and in films and been televised his antics on boat race night will be familiar to many.  However, such representations are only part of the story. This film, funded by Student Volunteering charity, ‘Student Hubs’ illustrates some of the ideas about students which were perpetuated in the popular media through a combination of archival footage and animated sequences. (more…)

London Metropolitan University is to cut its course offering by 70 per cent, including closing courses in history.

The University of Wales Institute, Cardiff is reported to be planning to axe its history and politics department.

There are plans afoot for Glasgow University to cut and merge courses in history, archaeology and classics.

Strathclyde University has emailed students about a “phased withdrawal from the following areas” – music, sociology, geography and community education.

However, there is still an interest in the of history at the OU both in Milton Keynes and London where, on 5th May a large number of academics attended a seminar at the Institute of Historical Studies in which the history of the OU was assessed by Dan Weinbren. If you want to see the powerpoint slides, contact us.

The death in January this year of Eric Robinson is an event which could be noted by historians of the OU because the 1966 White Paper which became the basis for the OU was published within months of the decision to create the polytechnics with which Robinson was so closely associated. The title of his book, The New Polytechnics: The People’s Universities (1968) indicates that there were competing ideas as to the best way to open up higher education and support students living at home. He starts the text with the words:

Sooner or later this country must face a comprehensive form of education beyond school – a reform which will bring higher education out of the ivory towers and make it available to all. … The future pattern of higher education in this country can be set in the development of these institutions [ie the polytechnics] as comprehensive people’s universities. This book is written in the hope of accelerating this process.

His vision of education might well have been shared by many staff at the OU. While the approaches of many polytechnics differed from the approach of the OU, there were some common roots. In a critique of the ‘disaster’ of Blair’s educational policies Robinson stressed the importance of  ‘democratic control of education’ and concluded that

Socialist education is to promote the power of the people, to make democracy work and to empower individuals to direct their own lives and not to tolerate being pushed around by those with “merit”.