Pearson, which owns the Edexcel exam board, Penguin, the Financial Times and other educational publishing and digital education businesses and is an FTSE 100 company, is to become a for-profit private higher education provider by opening Pearson College. This will be based in London and Manchester and will teach a business and enterprise BSc degree course validated by Royal Holloway and Bedford New College. Tuition fees will be £6,500 per year and there will be an option of an accelerated two-year course. Read the rest of this entry »
Should a public figure or institution be brave enough to wish, with the poet Robert Burns, ‘to see oursels as ithers see us’, the cartoonist’s art is likely to remind them of another adage: be careful what you wish for.
The British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent provides a window onto the ways in which people and organisations have been portrayed through the ages. As a national institution, The Open University hasn’t evaded capture by the caricaturist’s ink. This group of cartoons evokes an evolving pen portrait in which the ‘University of the Air’ lived up to its name in at least one respect: it was difficult to pin down in a visual medium. With no substantial image of its own, the OU was not so much used as a target for satire in its own right, as a means for cartoonists to satirise some of their more ‘usual suspects’. Groups of people and themes caricatured via their association with the OU included politicians, television, students, changing social mores and class aspiration.
Edward I
Edward I (1239 –1307) is alleged to have gone to Cambridge and declared it to be ‘an open university – open to all’, thus making him one of the earliest users of the term Open University. However, Henry Goulburn, the MP for Cambridge who spoke in the Commons on 28 July 1834, (this from a report of the Commons Debate in The Times 29.7.1834) argued this was unlikely as on Edward’s death the only known college in Cambridge was Peterhouse. Still, an alleged use of the term in about 1300 makes this the earliest reference. Unless, of course you know of earlier uses of the term.
Image credit: This image is in the public domain.
Coursera calls itself a ‘social entrepreneurship company’ which aims to deliver online courses. Founded by two academics from Stanford University and funded to the tune of $22m by the computer industries, it claims to offer ‘education for everyone’ by providing courses from its partner universities. These include the California Institute of Technology, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Virginia, Rice University, UC San Francisco, University of Illinois and University of Washington and also Toronto in Canada and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland. Coursera does not offer degrees, but students can be awarded certificates. Read the rest of this entry »
‘The broadening of my horizons and my appreciation of life has made joining the OU one of the best decisions I have ever made’.
In 1975 Brian Joyce, a self-employed salesman, started to study at the OU as he sought ‘the pleasure of learning new things’. After many years studying with a focus on earth sciences and evolution, he gained a degree. You can read his story, one of well over 100 which students and staff have uploaded, here: http://www8.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/historyofou/memories/my-15-years-the-open-university
Photo credit: Jurassic Coast, made available by Claudia Gabriela Marques Vieila under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License © Claudia Gabriela Marques Vieila
1. Who is the Open University’s current Chancellor? Read the rest of this entry »
In collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC and World Shakespeare Festival, The Open University is responsible for a new production of Julius Caesar which is set in a modern African state. The stage version has received excellent reviews. The Daily Telegraph called it a ‘production of great pace, panache and originality’. The television version is to break conventions. Shot alongside the stage rehearsals and during the actual theatrical run in Stratford-upon-Avon it features a Royal Shakespeare Company cast. The academic consultant on the programme was Dr Edmund King of The Open University. This production follows in the footsteps of previous OU ventures with Shakespeare.
The Open University Students Association (OUSA) is holding its conference 22-24 June on the Walton Hall campus.
There will opportunities to learn about studying, careers, faculties, research and to meet the Vice Chancellor. There is also the History of the OU Quiz. You’ll be able to pick up copies when you come along to the talk about the history of the OU at 4pm in the Jennie Lee Building Room 1. Alternatively, you can pick up copies on the Campus History Tour. Meet at the OUSA Desk at 3pm. Both these events will take place on 22nd June. The quiz answers will appear on this blog on 27th June at two minutes past midnight.
Regular readers will know that we often stress that one of the roots of the OU lies in the social democracy post-war welfare settlement as exemplified by the input of Wilson, Lee, Young, Perry and others. In addition it has been suggested that the OU also led the way towards some of the changes associated with the development of the quasi-market within the higher education sector. Now the relationship between democracy, the market and the universities is to be considered in a keynote address to be made at the OU. Read the rest of this entry »
