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HISTORY OF THE OU

The Open University was the world's first successful distance teaching university.

Born in the 1960s, the 'White Heat of Technology' era, the Open University was founded on the belief that communications technology could bring high quality degree-level learning to people who had not had the opportunity to attend campus universities.

The early years

The idea starts with the BBC
In 1926 the educationalist and historian J C Stobart wrote a memo, while working for the infant BBC, advocating a 'wireless university'. By the early sixties many different proposals were being mooted. R C G Williams of the Institution of Electrical Engineers argued for a 'teleuniversity', which would combine broadcast lectures with correspondence texts and visits to conventional universities - a genuinely 'multi-media' concept.

A response to the problem of exclusion
In an article for Where? Magazine (autumn 1962), Michael Young proposed 'an Open University' to prepare people for external degrees of London University. The BBC and the Ministry of Education were then discussing plans for a 'College of the Air'. In March 1963, a Labour Party study group under the chairmanship of Lord Taylor presented a report about the continuing exclusion from higher education of the lower income groups. They proposed an experiment on radio and television: a 'University of the Air' for serious, planned, adult education.

Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee
Harold Wilson, leader of the Labour Party, was thinking about 'a new educational trust' that brought together many institutions and organisations to produce television and other educational material, rather than on an independent and autonomous institution that granted its own degrees. When Labour won the election in 1964, Harold Wilson appointed Jennie Lee as Minister for the Arts, and asked her to take over the University of the Air project, moving her to the Department of Education and Science (DES).

Without Jennie Lee, it seems likely that Harold Wilson's idea would have failed. Her total commitment and tenacity gradually wore down the mountains of hostility and indifference that she faced. "In the Ministry, I was de jure a Minister of State - a junior minister - but de facto I was working on my own, dealing directly with the Treasury and with the Prime Minister. The civil servants hated it: all very irregular. But it was the only way you could get a new job done."

Jennie Lee's vision
"I hated the term 'University of the Air' because of all the nonsense in the Press about sitting in front of the telly to get a degree.

"Harold Wilson asked me to go to Chicago and Moscow. Neither was anything like what I wanted to do. The Chicago lads were lovely but they were only short- circuiting the first year or two of the degree. In Moscow all they were doing was routine long-term broadcasting and some correspondence courses.

"I knew it had to be a university with no concessions, right from the very beginning. After all, I have gone through the mill myself, taking my own degree, even though it was a long time ago. I knew the conservatism and vested interests of the academic world. I didn't believe we could get it through if we lowered our standards."

Advisory committee leads to manifesto commitment
Jennie Lee established an Advisory Committee, which led to a White Paper. Its report was included in a White Paper published in February 1966.

Labour's manifesto for the 1966 general election contained a commitment to establish the University of the Air. In that election, Mr Wilson was returned with an increased majority and in September 1967 came the crucial Cabinet decision to set up a Planning Committee 'to work out a comprehensive plan for an open university'.

Jennie Lee gave her name to the University's first Library beside Walton Hall. In 2004 a new University Library, housing her political archive, has opened. It is the centre of a massive digitisation project enabling millions of users to enjoy University Library facilities wherever they are.

The pioneering years

Walter Perry appointed as the first Vice-Chancellor
Professor Walter Perry was appointed as The Open University's first Vice-Chancellor.

"I came to The Open University from a wholly traditional background, having spent most of my working life as a member of the staff of the Medical Research Council and as Professor of Pharmacology at Edinburgh. I had no experience of any of the new universities, nor had I ever been involved in adult education.

"I had heard about the University of the Air, but I regarded it as a political gimmick unlikely ever to be put into practice. It wasn't until my son read out the advertisement for the post of Vice- Chancellor that I began to think seriously about the proposal and the challenge it presented.

"It wasn't that I had any deep-seated urge to mitigate the miseries of the depressed adult; it was that I was persuaded that 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 - for good - the standard of teaching in conventional universities. I believed that to be so important that it overrode almost everything else. And that is what I said in my application."

Preparations in 1969
Walter Perry continues: "During 1969 the first staff of the University were pushing ahead as fast as we could. A dozen of us were in office by May, using the house in Belgrave Square where the Planning Committee had been meeting. We had to write the first prospectus before any work had begun on the first foundation courses.

"By September 1969, The Open University transferred to Milton Keynes with 70 to 80 people. That winter the site turned into a quagmire, with floods from the river and our building activities. One hundred pairs of slippers were bought to save the new carpets.

The first student applications: 1970
"Applications from potential students were coming in: by the middle of 1970 we knew there were enough applications to make us viable. In January 1971 the first students began work on their first units of the first foundation courses."

Science at a distance
"Charismatic figures like Mike Pentz, the first Dean of Science, roared defiance at more conventional peers elsewhere, as the OU proved triumphantly that it is possible to teach university-level science to unqualified students, at a distance. Home experiment kits and residential schools became part of the OU folklore."

The years of growth

By 1980, student numbers grow to 70,000
Who's Who accepted that Eric Devenport, Bishop of Dunwich, did have a real degree after querying the BA Hons (Open) he listed after his name. The University's time had come.

By 1980, total student numbers had reached 70,000, and some 6,000 people were graduating each year. From then on the institution would each year boost new records in the numbers of people applying to study and achieving their degree.

The 1980s: growth and consolidation
The university's expansion continued throughout the 1980s as more courses and subject areas were introduced; as the importance of career development grew, so the university began to offer professional training courses alongside its academic programmes.

1983 saw the opening of the OU Business School, whose worldwide success has seen it become the largest business school in Europe. The university also expanded into Europe in the early 1980s, initially with a modest project for British nationals in Brussels that has expanded to attract more than 10,000 EU citizens outside the UK.

New methods of learning also came to the fore with the rapid growth in the use of computers. New study methods were added to the multi-media mix. The university's first taught higher degrees were offered; they, too, have become one of the university's stories of success at scale. More than 20,000 people are currently studying at a postgraduate level - a number higher than the entire student population of many other UK universities.

The 1990s: management, languages and law
Expansion continued to be the keyword for the university during the 1990s. New areas of study included English law (in association with the College of Law), modern languages and expanded programmes in most other faculties and schools. The introduction of named degrees - by which students are able to study a prescribed programme of courses - added to the range of programmes on offer. The range was boosted further with the expansion in undergraduate certificates and diplomas, which also allowed subject-specific profiles within degrees.

Increasing numbers of students also brought international expansion, as did the launch of Open University Worldwide, the university's international trading arm. In times of fast-changing technology, e-learning methods were incorporated into most of the university's courses, where such methods best met students' needs. As part of its commitment to educating all, the university began to commission peak-time series for broadcast on BBC TV.

The 1990s were a time for celebration too: 1998 saw the 25th anniversary of the university's first graduation ceremony and the conferment of the university's 200,000th graduate.

Is the Open University a 'real' university?
The Open University was the first institution to break the insidious link between exclusivity and excellence. It is a University founded on an ideal and, like all revolutionary ideas, attracted hostility and criticism.

In 1969, when the idea of The Open University was announced, it was described as "blithering nonsense" by Iain Macleod MP. More than three decades on, The Open University has managed to convince sceptics that academic excellence need not be compromised by openness:

• Our graduates are recognised at their full worth throughout society.
• More than 50,000 employers have endorsed the value of the OU by sponsoring their staff to enrol on courses.
• The OU is the largest provider of management education in Europe, and one in five MBA students in the UK is studying with the OU.

Recognition for teaching quality
In 2004 The Sunday Times Universities Guide said "Just four institutions — Cambridge, Loughborough, York and the LSE — have a better teaching record than the OU".

In key areas of the Government's own teaching quality assessment - such as general engineering - the OU was awarded the maximum possible score, out-performing the universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Imperial College.

They are remarkable feats for the OU, which has been teaching for just over 30 years.

In the new millennium there is not a university in the land that does not make use of OU materials and study methods.

Innovation in teaching methods
The OU has been faithful to its mission of openness to methods. Over three decades we have adopted various new media for teaching and learning. Audiocassettes and later videocassettes gave students more autonomy.

Then, in the 1980s, personal computers opened up exciting new possibilities for many courses. Many students are enthusiastic about exploring CD-ROM and web-based materials.

By the mid-nineties we began the massive exploitation of the internet that has made the OU the world's leading e-university. Today more than 180,000 students are interacting with the OU online from home.

• Each week, 25,000 students view their academic records online.
• When exam results were available, 85,000 students viewed them online
• The student guidance website receives 70,000 page hits per week.
• The Open Library receives more than 2.5 million page views each year.
• 110,000 students use the conferencing system.
• There are 16,000 conferences, of which 2,000 are organised and moderated by students themselves.

This intensity of usage allows colleagues to do pioneering research on the most effective approaches to online teaching and learning that gives the OU world leadership in this field.

Open University peak-time television programmes such as Rough Science, Renaissance Secrets, and Someone to Watch Over Me have been seen by millions of viewers and have won new critical acclaim for the University.

Looking towards 2010
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) report Britain Towards 2010: the Changing Business Environment heralds The Open University as offering a "vision for the future" as students and businesses demand a more flexible approach to learning.

The open entry philosophy of the OU has meant that excellent teaching, comparable in quality with other great universities, has been available to many more people. The key to The Open University's success has been excellence in scholarship, in teaching, in research and, above all, in the systems and methods which help people to learn and to succeed.