Friday, 17 March 2000
Remarks by
Sir John Daniel
Vice-Chancellor
The Open University
It is a great pleasure to be with you this afternoon. The Open University is proud of its association with the University of the Highlands and Islands Project and it has been a great privilege to welcome Sir Fraser Morrison into the Open University as our most recent Honorary Doctor.
The Open University is deeply rooted in Scotland. It was a distinguished Scottish political figure, Jennie Lee, who was charged with setting up the OU over thirty years ago. Her guiding principle was that this University, although radical in its mission and its methods, would be as good as the very best of the traditional universities in its quality.
It is a matter of great pride to the whole OU community that we have made Jennie Lee’s seemingly farfetched aspiration into a universally accepted reality. Today the OU ranks in the top 10% of UK institutions of higher education for the quality of its teaching. In General Engineering, a subject studied by a large proportion of OU students in Scotland, the OU scored the maximum possible rating, outranking both Oxford and Cambridge.
Another distinguished Scot, Walter Perry, left his safe job as vice-principal of the University of Edinburgh to take on the risky challenge of becoming the founding Vice-Chancellor of the Open University in 1969. Thirty years on I am constantly amazed to observe how many of the ideas that Lord Perry and his team generated in those early years have stood the test of time. One of his key principles was to base the curriculum structure of the OU on the Scottish rather than the English tradition of higher education. That choice has served us well.
I need only add that from the very start the people of Scotland have opted for Open University study in large numbers – and nowhere more than in these Highlands and Islands. This gives me particular personal pleasure because, as of the beginning of this new century, there are members of my family living in the Isle of Skye. I therefore enjoy every opportunity to come to this part of the world on business or pleasure.
Some people express surprise that, right from the earliest stirrings of the University of the Highlands and Islands Project, the Open University has done everything possible to facilitate its development. Why, they say, would you go out of your way to assist a potential competitor? That is not the way I see it.
The Open University takes very seriously its mission, which is to be open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods and open as to ideas. Our overriding purpose is to bring opportunities for education and training to the people of the UK, to reach into all corners of this country and its constituent nations, and to welcome the new methods and the new ideas which can advance that purpose.
The University of the Highlands and Islands Project is absolutely consistent with that mission and we welcome the new methods and the new ideas that you have brought to its realisation. If the Open University can be helpful to you as you undertake the difficult challenge of networking the institutions of the Highlands and Islands into a whole that is greater than the sum the parts we shall be more than satisfied.
We do not fear that the success of the University of the Highlands and Islands will be to the detriment of the Open University. It is a fact well proven that the more education people have, the more they want. Your own success will increase the appetite for knowledge and understanding among the people of this region and we shall always be here to help satisfy that appetite.
Thanks to the leadership and inspiration of Sir Fraser Morrison you are creating a new university for the new world brought in by a new century. Let us reflect together for a few minutes on what that means.
When the idea of a University of the Highlands and Islands was first mooted the Berlin Wall had only just come down, bringing to an end a long period of division between east and west that we called the Cold War. For most of the 1990s we talked about the times we were living in as the post-Cold-War period. Some tried to refer to it as the new international order, but since it seemed to be characterised by plenty of disorder in both politics and economics, that name didn’t seem very suitable either.
Today you hear more about the new international system and about the driving trend of globalisation that seems to define it. Under the disorderly surface of the 1990s things were happening which have created a world very different from the world of the Cold War years. What are the differences that distinguish our world of the noughties from the world of the eighties and the nineties?
The crumbling of the Berlin Wall was a symbol of a global process of democratisation that was already moving, that picked up much greater speed during the 1990s, and that is still going on. Let me identify four areas.
First, there has been the democratisation of finance. As barriers between countries came down capital flowed in ever increasing volume and with ever increasing speed around the world. Individuals in all countries became much freer to invest their money as they chose. A corollary of this trend was that governments lost power to determine the shape of their economies in a unilateral way.
Second, there has been the democratisation of technology. Again, this is a long-term trend that creates technologies that can be controlled by the individual. As well as trains, on which we travel in groups, we now have cars that we can drive ourselves. As well as the cinema, where we watch films in groups, we have television that allows us to select our own viewing. Computers used to be big expensive machines that only governments and big firms could afford. Today they are devices that individuals can own and use.
Technology has helped to drive a third process of democratisation, the democratisation of information. It is now much more difficult for powerful people to control what people can know. Freedom of information was already growing with the spread of newspapers, radio, television and telephones. Today the Internet and the World Wide Web have made it easy to spread information, whether true or false, all over the globe.
The fourth process of democratisation, in which we are all engaged, is the democratisation of education. This has travelled a very long way in the education of children. There are very few states which do not have as a goal to allow all children to attend school free. However, democratisation still has a long way to go in higher education. Universities in all countries still restrict entry to relatively small numbers of students. The Open University has made openness to people its fundamental ideal. All of you associated with the University of the Highlands and Islands are also dedicated to giving the opportunity of higher education to more people.
Those are four processes of democratisation: of finance, of technology, of information and of education, that have advanced rapidly during the 1990s and which continue in this new century.
With all this change it is interesting to do a ‘before-and-after’ comparison. What are the key differences between the Cold War era and this first year of the new century?
First, the central fact of the Cold War era was division between east and west, symbolised by the Berlin Wall. Today the central fact is the integration of all parts of the world, symbolised by the World Wide Web.
Second, another symbol of the Cold War was the hotline linking the red telephones in Moscow and Washington. We trusted the two presidents to remain in charge and avoid blowing up the rest of us in nuclear war. But today, in the integrated world of the web, no-one is in charge in that way. The Internet lets everyone communicate with everyone else.
The tussles of the Cold War era have been compared to sumo wrestling. It was a slow contest where what counted was weight of missiles and size of armies. Today the best sporting analogy is a series of sprint races over 100 metres. What counts is not size and weight but speed and fitness.
Finally, one powerful symbol of the totalitarian state in the Cold War era was the phrase taken from George Orwell’s book, Nineteen Eighty Four, that ‘Big Brother is watching’ you. This expressed the role of totalitarian regimes in maintaining an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and distrust in order to ensure that citizens did not dare to create alliances against the power of the state. Today Big Brother has gone, but has he been replaced, even in our liberal western regimes, by lots of little brothers who can use the Internet to invade our privacy in new ways.
All these examples show how much the world has changed in ten years. I am sure there are many people in the Highlands and Islands who wonder whether it has all been a change for the better. This new world is more challenging to individuals. Everything seems more uncertain. The role of government is shrinking. Innovation is constantly changing the devices and tools that we use in everyday life. We have constantly to learn new skills. The forces of change are not under anyone’s control, rather it seems as though we are all being stampeded along in an electronic herd.
All this puts a special responsibility on universities. What is the role of universities?
I suggest that the role of universities is ‘to help people maintain an independent understanding of their world’. What do those words mean?
The word independent is there to capture the unique role of universities as creators of understanding. In a knowledge society many claim the right to help us interpret and understand the world. However, most of those claimants such as the press; television; and governments cannot be independent of commercial and political interests. The individualistic and impartial nature of the true university remains unique.
The word understanding means going beyond information, it means going beyond knowledge, it means knowledge acquired with the sense of responsibility for how it comes to be known that can make it the foundation for action.
Universities help people to understand their world. Today our world includes our local community, our nation and the earth as a whole. These components of our worlds – and the relationship between them – are constantly changing so our understanding needs to be constantly renewed.
And the focus is on people. All people. University education can no longer be limited to an elite. Everyone needs to understand their world in order to take effective action. I am very proud that the first goal of the Open University is to be open to people.
How do universities help people maintain an independent understanding of our world? My final point is that good universities do not do this by giving people answers. They do it by teaching people to ask questions. It is by asking questions and testing the answers against further questions that people come to an understanding.
That is a key principle of Open University teaching. We always try to give students several perspectives on an issue and lead them, through asking questions, to decide which perspective is most satisfactory, or whether none of them is convincing. Most students begin by finding this frustrating but end by finding it liberating.
I end by congratulating all of you here who are engaged in the project of creating the University of the Highlands and Islands. You are creating a new university for a new century in a new world. No work could be more important.