Open University ,UK

Once mocked, the Open University

might offer a model for others

Part-time higher education

Jan 6th 2011 

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FORTY years ago this month a radical innovation arrived in higher education. The new Open University (OU) began to admit students who did not have the qualifications to get into other institutions.
Back then, OU lectures delivered remotely by hirsute professors, who dryly enumerated the laws of thermodynamics on late-night television, appealed only to the most dedicated of older people, determined to better themselves in their spare time. Yet in recent years more school-leavers holding respectable qualifications have signed up. The OU expects to recruit many more when proposed reforms to higher-education finance are enacted. It might even emerge as a model for other universities that once looked down on it.
Part-time undergraduate students have long had a raw deal. They paid tuition fees even before full-time ones were obliged to do so in 1998, without access to the system of grants and loans for which their full-time counterparts are eligible. Nevertheless their numbers have risen rapidly: up by more than two-fifths in the decade to 2008-09 (the most recent year for which data are available), compared with an increase of a quarter in the number of full-time students over the same period. The government plans to introduce measures that would enable part-time students in England to borrow money to cover their tuition fees—which might encourage even more people to study part time, at the OU and elsewhere.
That would help ease the squeeze on full-time university places, which is expected to get ever tighter. The recent economic downturn, combined with a rise in the number of school-leavers passing exams, has seen demand greatly outstrip supply (restricted by the state, which still subsidises both students and universities).
Another impending reform will allow universities in England to charge full-time students fees of up to £9,000 a year. A stampede to avoid the price hike is under way: on January 4th the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service reported that an extra 8,269 people had applied for a full-time place starting in September, up 2.5% on the previous year, which itself was a record. Increasing numbers of future undergraduates might choose to save cash by living at home while they study—as those taught by the OU have always done. Part-time students will be able to earn some money to ease their burgeoning debt burdens when not at their books.
At the OU, where students can get a degree for as little as £3,660 in total, the number of undergraduates has increased by a quarter over the past decade, while the number of young students has doubled. They come not only for a cheap education but also for a convenient one. Bespectacled dons sporting dodgy double-knit jumpers no longer fill the airwaves; instead students can download lectures from iTunes (more than 30m items have been downloaded since the OU started putting material on the service in 2008).
More than 14,000 people use their mobile phones to access OU material each month; the university has 35,000 Facebook friends and 9,000 followers on Twitter. As it turns 40, the OU might turn out to offer a vision of the future.

from PRINT EDITION | Britain,The Economist