{"id":60,"date":"2010-05-12T10:09:39","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T09:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=60"},"modified":"2010-06-11T17:21:58","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T16:21:58","slug":"dealing-with-a-new-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/?p=60","title":{"rendered":"Dealing with a new government"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_262\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Gordon-Brown-with-wife-Sarah-and-Business-Secretary-Lord-Mandelson-at-a-reception-at-Number-10-for-staff-and-former-students-of-the-Open-University-Crown-copyright.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-262\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-262\" title=\"Gordon Brown with wife Sarah and Business Secretary Lord Mandelson at a reception at Number 10 for staff and former students of the Open University; Crown copyright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/Gordon-Brown-with-wife-Sarah-and-Business-Secretary-Lord-Mandelson-at-a-reception-at-Number-10-for-staff-and-former-students-of-the-Open-University-Crown-copyright-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-262\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Was former OU Tutor, and former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown more sympathetic to the OU?<\/p><\/div>\n<p>With a new government in place, promising cuts in public spending, there may be some sense of <em>deja vu<\/em> at the OU.<\/p>\n<p>Forty years ago, with the University created by a Labour government but no students yet studying, the election of Ted Heath&#8217;s Tory government posed a real threat to the newly formed institution. William van Straubenzee, appointed as junior minister for higher education, reported \u2018I would have slit its throat if I could.\u2019 He blamed the outgoing Labour education minister Ted Short for some &#8216;nifty, last-moment work with the charter that made the OU unkillable&#8217;. Student numbers were cut but the University survived.<\/p>\n<p>Nine years later, another Conservative government, this time led by Margaret Thatcher, caused more problems for the OU. In 1980 the University had to cut expenditure by \u00a33.5 million, nine per cent of its 1979 expenditure and the government effectively imposed a 46 per cent increase in the undergraduate tuition fee. Again the University survived, as no doubt it will again, whatever the new government chooses to throw at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a new government in place, promising cuts in public spending, there may be some sense of deja vu at the OU. Forty years ago, with the University created by a Labour government but no students yet studying, the election of Ted Heath&#8217;s Tory government posed a real threat to the newly formed institution. William [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,18],"tags":[45,50,51,47,49],"class_list":["post-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-the-ou","category-politics","tag-government","tag-heath","tag-short","tag-thatcher","tag-van-straubenzee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1341,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions\/1341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60"}],"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=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/History-of-the-OU\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}