OPEN HOUSE - January 2001
VC's Column
Nonsense for the Global Era?
Before the OU began operations in 1971 an opposition politician of the time famously referred to the whole idea as ‘blithering nonsense’. For him the project was far-fetched in both aims and methods. He doubted the basic idea that far more people than were then admitted to UK universities could perform well and benefit from academic study. The hypothesis that large numbers of adults would want to combine hours of study with the demands of their families, work and communities was untested. The notion that with various new forms of communication technology you could teach people in their homes and communities, instead of making them come to campus, caused widespread scepticism. Using broadcast television as a vehicle for higher learning was thought to be particularly ludicrous – and so on. The epithet ‘blithering nonsense’ was not an isolated criticism. The press was at best sceptical, at worst hostile. Many educators and academics thought the OU was a worthy but rather dreamy vision that would never leave the margins of higher education.
The critics of thirty years ago have all eaten their words long ago - some did it with both grace and gladness. Today no one would refer to the purposes and methods of the Open University as ‘blithering nonsense’. But that is why it is interesting to ask what goals and techniques you would have to propose today for a new university in order for people to ridicule your ideas as nonsense. I like to ask myself that question because the OU will not remain true to its mission if it does not continue to define and to aspire to ideals and methods that create discomfort for the established order.
Some years ago Francis Fukayama suggested that we had come to the end of history. He meant that after the victory of liberalism, democracy and capitalism over socialism, totalitarianism and communism, new ideas about how to organise human society were no longer possible. Many think that the end of history, like the death of Mark Twain, is greatly exaggerated. But is the OU not now in danger of behaving as though all conceivable approaches to the university mission are already being tried?
Some colleagues are anxious that the OU is becoming more and more like other universities - and doing so on purpose so that subject reviewers from the Quality Assurance Agency feel more comfortable. Others point out that over thirty years the rest of higher education has tried to become more like the OU, especially in using distance teaching.
To continue to be an international force for innovation, we must be leaders, not followers. If others start to catch us up we must move even faster. Above all, we must be open to ideas. What new aims will help universities to serve humankind and knowledge in this era of globalisation? What new methods can bring learning and understanding to a young and growing world population that mostly lives in poverty? Can the OU still show the way?