Session 4 – 12th April – 10.15 – 11.05

Title of Presentation:        “The Door is Alarmed” –

35 years of attempting to widen participation in  the UK Open University

Presenters:                           Ormond Simpson , Senior Lecturer in 

        Institutional Research

Organisation:  The Open University Institute of Educational Technology

Summary:

This presentation will look at some of the issues involved in the OU’s widening participation efforts over the last 35 years and ask whether there might be useful lessons for other higher education institutions for better or worse.  It will examine some of the inherent internal tensions as they affect institutional attitudes within the OU and possibly within other institutions, outlines a brief history of widening participation in the OU and reports on a recent set of projects aimed at widening participation. 

The presentation will suggest that whilst there have been some successes, the ‘paradox of the title’ (the ‘Open’ versus the ‘University’) means that the OU has not made the progress in widening participation that some (but perhaps not all) of its founders had hoped.  It will be suggested that this paradox affects other institutions to a greater or lesser degree particularly when it comes to discussion of academic standards versus widening participation.   At the same time whilst open entry avoids some of the problems of admission faced by conventional universities it imposes extra responsibility on the OU to minimise the emotional and financial consequences to students who drop out of its courses.  Increasingly as students have to invest more in their education the financial return on that investment will become an issue particularly to students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds whose success rates are lower and who are therefore more likely to suffer financial loss.  Some estimates suggest that students investing in higher education experience a higher level of risk than investing in wildcat oil-well drilling.

Such approaches will be particularly important if the University moves further towards e-learning, where current evidence suggests that access from disadvantaged groups may be restricted and retention rates decreased. 

Ultimately the OU’s most important contribution to widening participation still appears to be the production of access materials such as the ‘Openings’ courses.  Making further real contributions to widening participation should be based on developing and marketing the ‘Openings’ programme as well as well-funded collaborative efforts with other educationally focused, probably nationally based organisations, which can generate funding that can be applied over long time periods by dedicated staff.