Six weeks ago the OU turned thirty and our students marked the event splendidly by winning University Challenge. I celebrated our thirtieth birthday at an OU alumni dinner in the USA. Gowns were on hand so that I could present degrees to two American OU graduates who had been unable to get to the UK for a ceremony. The alumni present urged that this small gathering in Pomona, California be recorded as the official inauguration of the new United States Open University (USOU).
Although there are independent open universities in jurisdictions as diverse as India, Hong Kong and Costa Rica, USOU is the first sister institution overseas set up by the OU itself. Its establishment is a symbol of the development of the OU over thirty years and a portent of the world-wide role of supported open learning in the new millennium.
Thirty years is a short time for a university. Some years ago the Carnegie Commission drew up a list of all institutions in the western world that have been in continuous existence since the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. There are sixty-six: the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Parliaments of Iceland and the Isle of Man, and sixty-two universities.
The evident longevity of universities is noteworthy because many now accuse them of failing to adapt to the requirements of today’s post-modern global era. It would be foolhardy to predict that all contemporary universities will outlive the organisations that house their current critics. But it does appear that the aspirations expressed in the missions, values, processes and structures of universities respond to something deep and durable in the human spirit.
Is that true of the Open University? Are our aspirations noble? Have we fulfilled them in our first thirty years? Are they durable enough to carry the OU to a 1030th anniversary in the year 2999?
The OU’s aspirations were articulated by Geoffrey Crowther at the inaugural ceremony in 1969. He said:
“We are open, first, as to people. The most urgent task before us is to cater for the many thousands of people, fully capable of a higher education, who, for one reason or another, do not get it, or do not get as much of it as they can turn to advantage. But this is not simply an educational rescue mission. We also aim wider and higher. Wherever there is an unprovided need for higher education, supplementing the existing provision, there is our constituency. There are no limits on persons.
“We are open as to places. The University will be disembodied and airborne. From the start it will flow all over the United Kingdom. But it will rapidly become one of the most potent and persuasive of our invisible exports. Wherever there are men and women seeking to develop their individual potentialities beyond the limits of the local provision, there we can offer our help. There are no boundaries of space.
“We are open as to methods. The world is caught in a communications revolution, the effects of which will go beyond those of the industrial revolution of two centuries ago. As the steam engine was to the first revolution, so the computer is to the second. Every new form of human communication will be examined to see how it can be used to raise and broaden the level of human understanding. There is no restriction on techniques.
“We are open, finally, as to ideas. There are two aspects of education, both necessary. One regards the individual human mind as a vessel into which is to be poured the knowledge and experience by which human society lives and moves. (The other) regards the human mind as a fire which has to be set alight. This also we take as our ambition.”
The 2,000 new graduates who have talked to me at this year’s degree ceremonies seem to judge we are carrying out that mission faithfully. Their lives show how the OU has challenged tradition by severing the insidious link between exclusivity and quality that universities long took for granted. Their testimony suggests that the values of openness to people, places, methods and ideas are a sound basis for the longevity of the Open University.