THE PRIME MINISTER is putting himself about so much that shoppers will probably not be surprised to find him glad-handing the queue at the supermarket this weekend or interrupting a quiet evening drink at the local pub. His visits are so many and so fleeting that he will surely, like American tourists and his wife, need vigilant aides to remind him of exactly where he is.
Tony Blair may barely have noticed that on Wednesday he dropped in on the campus of the Open University. He heard a little about the Huygens space project, which last month made the most distant landing ever of a spacecraft, on Saturn’s moon, Titan. He confided that he was “learning so much” from reading a book on the planets to his son, which says either a great deal about the intelligence of four-year-old Leo or the lack of knowledge of his father. Then it was blast-off time again and Mr Blair took off for the television studio.
So the opportunity for the Prime Minister to laud the achievements of a remarkable institution was wasted. And since the Open University is either too modest, or unskilled in the black arts of public relations, to ensure that its success is loudly hailed, it just saw him off the premises and got back to its business of providing education for anyone who wants it.
Had the OU been more politically and media savvy, it might have taken the opportunity of Mr Blair’s visit to point out that it had just that day finally netted its biggest charitable donation so far and would be putting all £2.75 million of it to work in the cause of furthering education in Africa. That ought to have ensured the OU some plaudits, as Mr Blair battles against Gordon Brown to see who can be the greater friend of that poverty-ridden continent. But the Prime Minister had left before the successful fundraisers even knew he would be arriving.
Perhaps the OU staff should all be made to study its communications courses. Then they might start to communicate the effectiveness, and even greater potential, of the institution better. It is one of the few positive results of the Wilson era, though dismissed in 1969 by the Tory, Iain Macleod, as “blithering nonsense”. It enrolled the first students in 1971 and now provides a crucial educational stepping stone for hundreds of thousands of people.
Advertisement
There are 209,000 taking part in the OU’s courses, 20,000 of them doing postgraduate degrees. Whereas studying with the OU once meant being obliged to watch television at unsocial hours and relying on the postal service for communication, technological developments have revolutionised distance learning. The internet allows for conversation and classroom discussion for those who want it while those who prefer to keep their studying solitary may continue to do so.
On the Government’s assessments, the standard of teaching is predominantly classed as excellent and in The Sunday Times’s last set of university league tables the OU ranked fifth, ahead of Oxford. Yet while other university vice-chancellors bemoan their finances and Oxbridge deficits deepen, the OU balances its books. It finished the year to last July with a £4 million surplus, having bolstered its grant income of £174 million with student fees and some outside earnings.
As the convoluted debate on top-up fees raged, the OU continued charging its modest fees to students, providing loans to help them to pay where necessary. The average fees are just £440 a year and a first degree, consisting of six modules, might cost around £3,000. Since most students are earning while they are learning, the money rarely poses a problem.
So why is the Government, with its proclaimed purpose of driving half of all young people to university, not pushing more of them in the direction of the OU instead of the Student Loan Company? What is the sense in encouraging youngsters to acquire heavy debts in the pursuit of three years of clubbing with, perhaps, a little light studying on the side?
Many of these students will leave their universities with degrees that prove worthless in the workplace and some will undoubtedly join the burgeoning ranks of young bankrupts now beginning to appear. Young people who opted for the OU will take longer to collect their degree but are likely to find that, at the end of the process, they are far better fitted for a successful career than those who have taken their poor quality A-levels to whichever obscure and undemanding course would accept them.
Advertisement
The OU is open to them, as it is to anyone, regardless of qualifications or age, as long as they are over 18. It is now finding, however, that youngsters are waking up to the fact that there is an alternative to running up student debts. In the mid-1990s, only one OU student in 20 was under 25. Of the latest entrants, the proportion is closer to one in five.
The OU is a great British success story and one which is having an impact well beyond this country. Its methods and its courses can take further education to those who would not otherwise have access to it and Brenda Gourley, the energetic vice-chancellor, is intent on developing this. It can also be applied to teaching others to teach, which is how the donation to its Africa fund will be applied.
Professor Gourley sees endless potential for the OU. She realises that its contribution to education in Britain is not fully recognised and that the OU needs to lift its profile. So far, however, all it has done in this direction is to “modernise” its logo. Mr Blair would no doubt appreciate the importance of such a gesture, but it is not enough.