History of the OU

The History of the OU project was pleased to receive a copy of The Open University in Wales: A Charter Celebration by Mandy Ashworth, which was published in 1994 to celebrate the University’s 25^th anniversary. This contains a fairly detailed rundown of the history of the OU in Wales, some of its unique features, and ways in which it pioneered initiatives that were later taken up by the University as a whole. If any readers know of similar publications relating to other regions or nations, the project would like to hear from you.

The Vice-Chancellor’s report of 1980 tells readers that a review had been set up ‘to help the University achieve a redirection of effort to higher priority activities, if necessary over a period of years rather than months, at a time, nationally, of static or reduced funding.’

The report tells us ‘staff would need to accept significant changes to their job specifications’. Other proposals included a possible redefinition of activities in the regions (sic) and review of the Institute of Educational Technology.

From 1971 the Open University in Wales, Y Brifysgol Agored, has been represented at the Welsh National Eisteddfod, which is conducted in Welsh. When a competition was organised for an englyn (a single verse of two couplets in strict metre) with the subject was ‘Y Brifysgol Agored’, Dic Jones, a chaired bard, won with the following entry:

Agored ysgol gwerin – I danio

Doniau’r dyn cyffredin,

Daeth y coleg i’r gegin

A chwrs gradd i chwi ar sgrin

This has been translated as:

An open school for the people – igniting

The gifts of the common man,

A college came to the kitchen.

A BA course to the TV screen.

Quoted in Mandy Ashworth, ‘The Open University in Wales. A Charter Celebration, April 1994′, pp. 12-13.

Obituaries of Jones appear here and here .