by deep mutual contempt

Unfortunately, the situation at the Open University is far worse than you reported (Open University plans major cuts to number of staff and courses, 22 March). Despite the university’s warm words about working with academics, the relationship between the vice-chancellor’s executive and the academic body is now characterised?by deep mutual contempt. The dismemberment of the university under the Orwellian-sounding Student First Transformation programme has involved endless ineffective consultations, which the leadership has used while enacting numerous changes outside of the normal processes of academic governance.

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Where voices of opposition have been raised, senior faculty staff are pressurised to keep quiet (and not to support the pension strike). With an ever-present threat of redundancies, others are simply fearful of speaking out in public. Disquiet with the direction of change and incompetent management has seen innumerable departures of senior staff under peter Horrocks’s tenure, including three heads of finance, three heads of IT, two directors of strategy and a growing number of executive deans. The current leadership oversaw the disastrous closure of regional OU centres and the chaotic introduction of the group tuition policy, all against warnings from experienced academics.

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OU staff are now in a fight for survival of the university, something that can only be achieved with a radical change of direction, or a change of leadership.
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? The news about the Open University is very saddening, particularly for the many thousands?of its students and ex-students whose lives have been immensely changed for the better. It has also been badly affected by the increased competition from both public and private institutions, as well as the government’s destructive?policies on part-time students. But it’s also true that much of the damage has been self-inflicted. Under both its previous vice-chancellor, Martin Bean, and its current one, peter Horrocks, the OU has moved remorselessly further?and further into online provision, despite increasing evidence that online or e-teaching does not work well, especially for the less well-qualified entrants the OU was always meant to attract.

In a Brookings e-newsletter in February 2016, Ben Wildavesky, director of higher education studies at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in New York, wrote an article entitled The Open University at 45: What can we learn from Britain’s distance education pioneer?. professor Wildavesky identified a number of critical OU innovations, but the one he picked out as the OU’s biggest accomplishment was “combining scale with personalisation”. He noted that “for many students … this personal relationship with an instructor is the key”.

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The OU’s progressive voyage into a virtual world will increasingly depersonalise it and inevitably reduce its graduation rate (already a disastrous 13%) even further. As for the idea that spending ￡2.5m on KpMG can help is simply delusional. Many of us still hope it’s not too late to change direction and save one of the world’s greatest educational innovations.
Ormond Simpson
Senior lecturer in institutional research, Open University 1998-2008

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