{"id":3159,"date":"2019-02-04T00:01:24","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=3159"},"modified":"2019-02-02T22:41:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T21:41:30","slug":"50-objects-for-50-years-no-42-the-perry-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=3159","title":{"rendered":"50 objects for 50 years. No 42. The Perry Building"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Perry Building (see illustration) is on the Milton Keynes campus and is named after Walter Laing Macdonald Perry KT OBE, Baron Perry of Walton, (1921 – 2003). One of the influential Scots at the OU he was born in Dundee<\/a> in 1921. He died in 2003<\/a> and was the subject of obituarties in the Independent<\/a> and Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The image here includes the art work<\/a> outside the building.<\/p>\n

As its founding Vice-Chancellor Walter Perry was central to the creation and establishment of The Open University. He was appointed in May 1968, felt that the OU could \u2018change the face of education not only in Britain but in the world\u2019 and set out to transform learning and teaching. There were 42,000 applications to start studying in 1971 of whom 25,000 were accepted. Other UK universities which opened in the 1960s started with a few hundred students. He established a successful system for transfer of academic credits and he encouraged prisoners to study at the OU. Despite opposition from those who felt the OU should only teach, he noted that \u2018it was the intent of the new university to promote the research activities of its academic staff, an intent from which the Open University has never wavered\u2019. Many knew him as a skilled negotiator, despite the fact that as he noted \u2018at one Senate meeting in 1971 each member received 487 pages of typescript weighing 2lbs 15 oz\u2019. He was also flexible. When the site was a sea of mud he sent out for slippers<\/a> which were issued to staff. He initially demonstrated little interest in the regions and nations, claiming that he used an amended version of the further educational administrative boundaries because \u2018we had no coherent plan for the regions when we started; they were simply allowed to evolve\u2019. Nevertheless, the model of central planning was amended to encompass the specific needs and aspirations of nations. He insisted on high academic and pedagogic standards noting that<\/p>\n

the standard of teaching in conventional universities was pretty deplorable. It suddenly struck me that if you could use the media and devise course materials that would work for students all by themselves, then inevitably you were bound to affect \u2013 for good \u2013 the standard of teaching in conventional universities. I believed that to be so important that it overrode almost everything else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also recognised how difficult<\/a> it was to study with the OU. His history of the OU, Walter Perry, Open University: A personal account by the first Vice-Chancellor <\/em>(Milton Keynes: Open University, 1976) was one of the blocks upon which Daniel Weinbren, The Open University, A history<\/em> (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) was built.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Perry Building (see illustration) is on the Milton Keynes campus and is named after Walter Laing Macdonald Perry KT OBE, Baron Perry of Walton, (1921 – 2003). One of the influential Scots at the OU he was born in Dundee in 1921. He died in 2003 and was the subject of obituarties in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[201,44,185],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-3159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-50-objects","category-people","category-walton-hall-campus","tag-perry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159","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=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3159"}],"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=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}