Open Eye - March 2001
Open to Blithering Nonsense
In the most widely quoted epithet we have ever attracted, Iain McLeod MP, called the notion of the OU ‘blithering nonsense’ when our University was created in 1969. Many radical innovations came together at the creation of the OU in order to fulfil its ambitious mission of being open to people, places, methods and ideas.
First, of course, there was the unprecedented step of eliminating all academic prerequisites for undergraduate entry. Then, despite the poor image of correspondence education at the time, the OU committed itself to teach at a distance on a large scale. Faced with the inadequacy of the curricular frameworks for higher education in England for adult learners it adopted Scottish programme structures. Given the need to use campus facilities for residential schools the new University opted for an unusual academic year starting in February. It offered courses that were original in concept and structure, not least in being much more interdisciplinary than was usual in UK higher education at that time. Through a network of thousands of tutors the OU raised the standard of student support and attracted a committed following of academic staff from across the whole HE sector. Back at Walton Hall it developed the concept of the course team, a multidisciplinary group of academics and others who would work together, sometimes for several years, in developing each course. Never had so many new approaches come together in one institution. When Lord Perry stepped down as Vice-Chancellor in 1980 he could claim that the OU had institutionalised innovation to a unique degree in higher education.
As I prepare to relinquish the office myself and move to UNESCO I find it interesting to ask what new ideas and new approaches would have to be brought together if a country were to want to set up a radically new university today. In particular, what sort of concept of the university would provoke politicians into labelling it as ‘blithering nonsense’?
If we find it difficult to find an answer to that question does it mean the world is running out of ideas? Some years ago the historian Francis Fukayama argued that we have now reached the ‘end of history’ in ideas about political economy. He meant that with the collapse of communism there were no credible ideas on offer for the organisation of society other than the combination of market economics and liberal democracy. It was a daring statement to make but was he actually wrong? We hear much less today about the Third Way.
Can it be that we have also reached the end of history as regards ideas about universities? I find that unlikely - but where are the radical notions about the future academy? To be true to its mission of openness the Open University should be a wellspring of new ideas. There are indeed many such ideas around.
One is not a new idea but a modern manifestation of the venerable academic principle that knowledge should be freely available. This principle is under threat from the current trend to assume that knowledge (e.g. about the human genome) should be made into private property. The counter trend is the open source movement. As the OU produces more courses on the web could it not make some or all of them available on an open source basis? This would allow anyone can use them and adapt them provided that they also made their adaptations freely available.
This interesting proposal is related to another idea of bringing together some of the open universities around the world to share courses. Such a grouping, call it Open Universities International, already exists in embryonic form through the many institutions that now partner with the OU. Transforming a series of bilateral partnerships into a multilateral network of institutions with similar values could be a way of making a wider array of programmes to people around the world.
Thirdly, universities assume that study must involve a large time commitment. Can we be more open as to time? Can we offer more frequent opportunities to begin courses without losing the advantage of having student cohorts? Can we make the study of short ‘learning objects’ a respectable academic activity?
This does not seem like blithering nonsense. Perhaps world has come to a broader understanding of the role of universities.