Sesame - March 2001
VC’s Column
Good news and bad news
As I prepare to leave the OU I look back on eleven years as Vice-Chancellor and reflect on how the OU has changed. Compared to the 1980s, when there were some political and financial difficulties, the recent period has been largely an era of good news for the University. The higher education reform of 1992, which integrated the OU into a national funding framework, was a key moment. We have benefited from being treated like the rest of the HE system in areas like funding mechanisms, research support and teaching assessment.
It has also been helpful that government policy has often focused on areas of OU strength such as expanding student numbers and widening access to higher education for disadvantaged groups. As a result the OU has usually been near the top of the list for the annual increase in its support grant from public funds. We have just received the grant announcement for 2001-02 and I am pleased to see that the OU heads the list with an 8.9% increase. Furthermore, although we now funded separately in Scotland, the OU still receives the largest grant awarded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England, just ahead of Cambridge and Oxford.
The practical effect is that the OU has almost doubled in size during my tenure as Vice-Chancellor. In 1990 there were around 100,000 people studying for OU degrees and awards. Today the figure is approaching 200,000. This reflects the growth in our programming, especially at postgraduate level, and also the steady increase in OU students outside the UK.
Despite our growth in size, scope and academic reputation not all the news has been good. For instance, I was sorry when we had to curtail our primary PGCE programme prematurely because of an unfavourable report from Ofsted. I am delighted that we are now going back into teacher training with a new programme that has strong political support.
A recent disappointment was the decision by the English funding council not to provide funds for a programme for the first two years of a degree in medicine that we had developed with nine partner medical schools. The proposal would have allowed students to complete the first two years of the programme by studying part-time for three years and then going full-time to the partner medical schools. We and the medical schools think that this is a good way to broaden the profile of the medical profession.
It seems that everyone else thinks it is a good programme too. The problem is that to make it viable the funding council would have to allocate to the programme over 400 of the 1,000 new places in medical education. This appears to be politically difficult, even though many medical schools were involved in the bid. However, the idea is too good to go away and the OU will contribute to medical education one of these days. I’m just sorry that it won’t be in my time as VC!