Open Eye - June 2000
VC's Column
Changing the World
In May we held a conference in Milton Keynes to mark the tenth anniversary of OU programmes in Russia and Central Europe. It was attended by delegations from our partner institutions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Russia and Slovakia. They seemed very moved as they reflected on what they have achieved, with the help of the OU, in the ten short years since the Berlin Wall was swept away.
The initiative came first from Hungary, which began its reforms earlier than the rest of the Soviet bloc. In the late 1980s a group of farsighted Hungarians scoured the world for models that could help them address the huge challenge of education and training that the post-communist world would bring. They concluded that distance learning in general, and the Open University in particular, held enormous promise. Two things happened. In 1989 leaders in distance learning from across Europe met in Hungary and formed the Budapest Platform in order to commit the help of western Europe to the educational transformation of the Soviet bloc. This evolved into EDEN, the European Distance Education Network, and has played a vital role in cementing contacts and promoting professionalism in distance learning across the continent.
At the same time the Hungarians began a dialogue with the the OU about a collaborative venture to teach business and management. Both sides wished to follow the example of the OU in reaching out to ordinary people and operating at scale. This meant teaching in the local language and offering certificates and diplomas for junior and middle managers rather than presenting the MBA in English. The original idea was to allow translation of OU courses and to provide advice about creating an OU-style learning system. However, the desire for a western qualification was so strong that we developed a closer partnership leading to OU awards. With the help of the UK’s Know-How fund and the British Council translation of courses and training of tutors began.
Meanwhile news of the idea spread quickly around a region that was now celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. Within two years similar schemes were in place in Czechoslovakia, Russia, Bulgaria and Romania. Each partner and each language was different. In Hungary the Eurocontact company was set up by the local equivalent of the CBI. In Russia four engineers from the space program created LINK. In Slovakia and Bulgaria new private universities were established, the City University of Bratislava and the New Bulgarian University. In Romania CODECS, a foundation for the promotion of the civil society, made collaboration with the OU its main activity.
The early days were challenging. The recurrent costs had to be covered by student fees, yet there was little money around and the infrastructure throughout the region was poor. Nevertheless, the tremendous enthusiasm of local staff and students and the dedication of the country coordinators from the OU Business School saw us through. Numbers grew quickly and student groups multiplied all over central Europe and right across Russia to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific. The programmes reached 70,000 students over the decade and 12,000 are enrolled this year. I know of no other western intervention in education and training the former Soviet bloc that even comes close to the OU programmes in scale and sustainability.
But for me our success is not mainly in the numbers. It is in the transformation of people and organisations. I remember a student in Slovakia who told me that when she started the first OU course she had one stall on the open street market. By the time she finished the certificate she owned a chain of shops – and said she owed it all to what she had learned from the OU. In the 60,000-employee Bulgarian steel company Kremikovtzi a group of senior managers took the OU courses together and proceeded with a root-and-branch reform of the firm on that basis.
Our local tutors are extraordinary. Many of them believe that the OU’s teaching and learning system, with its emphasis on participation and questioning, is a powerful expression of the civil society that they want to see in their countries. They and the students have an immense pride in the OU and are convinced it has changed their world for the better.