History of the OU

Photographer: Richard Learoyd Copyright (C) The Open University

A report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently asked ‘How can universities support disadvantaged communities?’ It concluded that ‘Most universities thought community engagement was important’ and that ‘Some universities were much more active than others in supporting disadvantaged communities. Institutional commitment to this is a key factor’. The OU had such engagement written into its founding Charter which specifies the importance of the ‘educational well-being of the community’. Many OU students have long been involved in their local communities because they did not leave their homes in order to study. It seems as if the OU led theway towards such engagement by other universities.

The OU's first degree ceremony, Alexandra Palace, 1973

Numerous graduates have recognised the positive impact of university on their lives. However, for many OU students their studies dramatically changed their trajectory and, for some, their pride in their achievement came after a fall.

While full-time young students are often bolstered through their studies, OU students often acknowledge the collective support and commitment from family, tutors, colleagues and friends. Students did not need to arrive at the OU assuming that a university education was a birthright determined by their class position, educational qualifications or age. Perhaps we can hear in the whoops and cheers that echo around any OU graduation ceremony the collective transformations that the OU has helped to shape. and the recognition that this is an award not only for individuals but also for their networks and supporters.

Interviewed at her graduation ceremony, Alex Wood, indicated that for her graduation was not the marking of an, apparently seamless, individual intellectual journey from school to degree. During the six years she took to complete her OU degree , she went through two bereavements, a break up, a new relationship, a house move, relocation, promotion (she was a police officer) and the birth of two children.  She attended her graduation while nine months’ pregnant with her third child.  

If you have a Graduation Day tale, please share it with us.

Today I want to outline new proposals on which we are working, a dynamic programme providing facilities for home study to university and higher technical standards, on the basis of a University of the Air and of nationally organised correspondence college courses. These will be intended to cater for a wide variety of potential students. There are technicians and technologists who perhaps left school at sixteen or seventeen and who, after two or three years in industry, feel that they could qualify as graduate scientists or technologists. There are many others, perhaps in clerical occupations, who would like to acquire new skills and new qualifications. There are many in all levels of industry who would desire to become qualified in their own or other fields, including those who had no facilities for taking GEC at 0 or A level, or other required qualifications; or housewives who might like to secure qualifications in English Literature, Geography or History. What we envisage is the creation of a new educational trust, representative of the universities and other educational organisations, associations of teachers, the broadcasting authorities.

Glasgow, 8 September 1963

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.

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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 »