{"id":2311,"date":"2012-05-30T09:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2311"},"modified":"2012-05-30T09:48:22","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T08:48:22","slug":"end-of-an-era-or-repetition-of-an-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=2311","title":{"rendered":"End of an era, or repetition of an error?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many people have clear ideas about what they think that the OU has done, its history. These are reflected in their views about its future. For example, it is argued\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thethoughtstash.wordpress.com\/2011\/07\/25\/the-end-of-the-open-university-as-we-know-it\/\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/thethoughtstash.wordpress.com');\">here\u00a0<\/a>that \u2018the Open University is trying to poach full-time students from \u201ctraditional brick universities\u2019. Competition for students was not invented by the OU\u00a0and throughout its life the OU (open to people) has resisted treating\u00a0students simply as objects to be poached\u00a0or assumed that some adult learners automatically belong elsewhere.\u00a0 Doug Clow proposed another approach and others noted that the OU was cheaper than other universities in England but the &#8216;thought slash blog&#8217; continued to present the increase in fees as \u2018the end of the OU as we know it &#8212; but only for students that live in England&#8217;, <a href=\"http:\/\/thethoughtstash.wordpress.com\/2012\/05\/27\/i-assume-the-open-university-isnt-expecting-many-applicants-from-england\/\" onclick=\"javascript:urchinTracker ('\/outbound\/article\/thethoughtstash.wordpress.com');\">here<\/a>. Understanding\u00a0the shift in funding towards individual learners\u00a0and away from taxpayers as part of a longer and wider trend could help us gain a better sense of its implications.\u00a0Presenting change in terms of a drama of epochal moments may be less useful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many people have clear ideas about what they think that the OU has done, its history. These are reflected in their views about its future. For example, it is argued\u00a0here\u00a0that \u2018the Open University is trying to poach full-time students from \u201ctraditional brick universities\u2019. Competition for students was not invented by the OU\u00a0and throughout its life [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311","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=2311"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2314,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311\/revisions\/2314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2311"}],"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=2311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}