![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/John-Daniel_en-300x55.jpg\" "\\"John")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
According to Cherwell<\/em>,<\/a> 177 dons have no confidence in the Universities Minister, David Willets,\u00a0 Jonathan Black<\/a>, the director of\u00a0a careers service and Fellow of New College, Oxford sees this as a wider lack of confidence in the government.\u00a0\u00a0Elsewhere there is a lack of confidence in changes which are being made to universities. Although she is against charging higher tuition fees Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse, the minister for higher education and research of France\u00a0has still succeeded in provoking\u00a0professors and students to take to the streets (in both 2007 and 2009) and demand her resignation. She has argued<\/a> for 15 big universities across the country. This has echoes of an idea associated with former Open University VC John Daniel, who coined the word mega-university (see Daniel, John S (1996) Mega-universities and Knowledge Media: Technology Strategies for Higher Education<\/em>, Kogan Page, London). He, however, looked to the past, noting that Walter Perry <\/a><\/a>\u2018did more than anyone to build the foundations for today\u2019s mega-universities. It is largely because of him that we can use the word \u2018mega\u2019 about these institutions\u2019. Perhaps if Ministers better understood the evolution of the OU then\u00a0academics would have more faith in their pronouncements about the best way forwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to Cherwell, 177 dons have no confidence in the Universities Minister, David Willets,\u00a0 Jonathan Black, the director of\u00a0a careers service and Fellow of New College, Oxford sees this as a wider lack of confidence in the government.\u00a0\u00a0Elsewhere there is a lack of confidence in changes which are being made to universities. Although she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,18],"tags":[86,46],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-politics","tag-john-daniel","tag-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![<\/a>\u2018did more than anyone to build the foundations for today\u2019s mega-universities. It is largely because of him that we can use the word \u2018mega\u2019 about these institutions\u2019. Perhaps if Ministers better understood the evolution of the OU then\u00a0academics would have more faith in their pronouncements about the best way forwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Cherwell, 177 dons have no confidence in the Universities Minister, David Willets,\u00a0 Jonathan Black, the director of\u00a0a careers service and Fellow of New College, Oxford sees this as a wider lack of confidence in the government.\u00a0\u00a0Elsewhere there is a lack of confidence in changes which are being made to universities. Although she is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,18],"tags":[86,46],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people","category-politics","tag-john-daniel","tag-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/John-Daniel_en.jpg\"){kind=link}