Open Eye - June 2001
VC's Column
Open to people means open to the world
In my last Open Eye columns before I take up my new post as Assistant Director-General for Education at UNESCO I am reflecting on the ‘four opens’ of the OU’s mission: ideas, methods, places and people. Last month I looked at openness to places and the expansion of the OU around the world. Today I examine our most fundamental aspiration, to be open to people.
At the OU’s launch in 1969 its most radical feature, at least to British and European observers, was the policy of open entry. “We take it as axiomatic”, wrote the Planning Committee, “that no formal academic qualification would be required for registration as a student”. It was revolutionary for a group of senior academics to take such a principle as axiomatic. “We were all risk takers”, said the chairman, Sir Peter Venables.
In 1970 the OU opened its doors and 40,000 people who met the simple criteria for admission – to be aged over 21 and a UK resident – applied to become students. There was a lively debate about the profile of the first intake. Those who looked for a random cross-section of the population were disappointed. The thousands of teachers who applied made the early student body more male and more middle class than it later became. There were issues of measurement. If, instead of recording the social class of OU students, one took that of their parents – which was the basis of other universities’ data – then the OU did present a more popular profile.
Today society has more exacting criteria for openness. It is not enough for a door to be open. Some of those who might benefit from going through the door do not go near it. Either they assume the interior is not their type of place or they imagine that those within are not their sort of folk. Institutions that offer opportunities for lifelong learning have to counter this attitude. The Learndirect project puts learning centres in high streets, factories and shopping centres because some of those it hopes to reach see even further education colleges as an alien environment.
The OU addresses the issue at the human level, first by trying to ensure that OU people (i.e. students, associate lecturers, and staff in all areas) are everyone’s ‘sort of folk’. Perseverance yields results. Our work in local communities is increasing the ethnic diversity of students and staff. Large numbers of citizens on benefit are studying with the OU thanks to government access programmes that cut the cost. Students with disabilities, already numbered in the thousands, account for an increasing proportion of our annual intake. The gender balance of the OU student body settled at 50:50 long ago and I am pleased that the committee charged with finding the OU’s next Vice-Chancellor has a substantial majority of women members.
The second response is to tailor course offerings to different needs instead of simply marketing existing programmes to a wider public. This is being done by making courses shorter and providing those on the bottom rungs of important occupational ladders with convenient ways to climb higher.
No matter how hard we try to be open to people we always have our blind spots. Over eleven years at the OU the most discriminatory comments that I have heard were made by colleagues who wear a commitment to equal opportunity on their sleeve. Ironically, passionate inclusiveness always seems to contain a kernel of exclusion, whether the prejudice is against Americans, continental Europeans, those of religious faith or simply colleagues who own dinner jackets!
I admire the way that our colleagues at the United States Open University have added open to the world to the ‘four opens’ they adopted from us. Outside Europe the OU has tended to keep its students in their separate national compartments, whereas our American colleagues assume that the opportunity to work with students from different cultures is a potential asset of OU study.
The next frontier in our commitment to be open to people is international. One size cannot fit all yet every course offering must come with its particular perspective and assumptions. The challenge is to be both local and universal. No university yet comes close to achieving this but it could be a realistic goal for the OU and its partners.