Wow. The Open University is 40 years old!
To be perfectly honest I would never have rated the chances of the Open University being anything other than a dismal failure at the start. After all, it was one of those things kicked off by a left wing Labour government who seemed set on lowering the barriers to getting a degree so much that everyone would be able to get one.
Although it could easily have become just a place that handed out pretty pieces of paper to anyone who turned up but instead it forged its own path over the years and constantly improved the quality and range of courses on offer. It still maintains the “open to all” ethos though and because of that it’s a very popular university with many people who would have difficulty in getting to a normal university yet who feel that they would like to pick up some qualifications.
Whilst in the past the typical OU student would have been someone in their 40s doing the odd course out of interest or one of the many pensioners keeping their minds active the relatively low cost of the courses now attracts those just leaving school. In a recent tutorial I went to the mix was more or less an equal split between the older and the younger generation of students. Some schools even put their pupils in for a selection of OU courses these days rather than hitting the A-levels.
The courses on offer have changed massively over the years too. I can still remember watching some of the Saturday morning OU broadcasts as a teenager but even in the course of the seven years I spent on my modern languages degree with them the quality was noticeably better towards the end of that time than it was at the start. In fact, the languages degree was something that I’d not have thought it would have been possible to do via them which shows just how far they’ve moved on over those 40 years.
Added to the original selection of largely arts and science courses (if my memory of those Saturday morning courses is any indication!), they’ve branched out into management (with an impressive MBA programme), languages and even law. Not too far in the future it would seem that they’ll be turning out medical doctors as their range of medical courses seems to broaden with each passing year.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about them though is that they’re motoring up the research league table. One wonders just how long it will be before they’re nudging the likes of Oxford and Cambridge.
Anyway, happy birthday guys!
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Copyright © 2008-2010 by Arnold Stewart. All rights reserved.