The Story of the Open University


The Story of the Open University

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The '60s - a time of change.

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# You will not be able to stay home, brother... #

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But in the corner of Britain's living rooms, another sort of revolution was underway...

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-Aggregation in the slime mould...

-Let's look at some examples...

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..one led by really quiet men and women in tank-tops,

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armed with bits of cardboard and some massive equations.

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Their clarion call...

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THEY SING THE OPEN UNIVERSITY THEME

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The Open University is 40 years old, and this is its story.

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-It had never been done before.

-It was all so crude.

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Bizarrely, it featured Darth Vader in a sort of cut-down leotard with a whip.

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Let's summarise the conditions for acceptability.

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From a bold experiment that no one seemed to want...

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You can't get a degree by watching TV.

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Couldn't bear the idea that the public should be able to be educated.

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..To the largest university in Europe.

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Who created it and why?

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It's much more than a tale of kipper ties and post-pub TV.

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It's an old joke. It's not funny any more. We don't do that.

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Here I am, sitting with a pen. In my life previously, I'd be sitting with a gun.

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For God's sake. I deserved a degree. That's what I felt.

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In four decades, the OU has taught over 2 million people.

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-And I'm one of them.

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Feeding in this information.

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Here's my input parameter, parameter S.

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CLEARS THROAT

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DOES VOCAL WARM-UP

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'I don't think I'd be doing Othello if I hadn't done the Open University.'

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No, Iago, I'll see before I doubt. When I doubt, prove.

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And on the proof, there is no more but this. Away at once with love or jealousy!

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'I'd never have come near doing'

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a classical theatre piece like this

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because I just wouldn't have been equipped.

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I had this weird chip on my shoulder about education for quite a long time.

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Everybody I knew in the business had a degree, had been to Oxbridge or a red-brick university. And I thought,

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"I feel like there's something missing in my life."

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I left school when I was 16 with seven CSEs.

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I don't even know what they are.

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I think they're akin to a chocolate fire-guard.

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I didn't have any qualifications, really.

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I went to work at British Federal Welders.

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Six months in, I was asked to go on New Faces.

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I got through it and my life changed.

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In 1998, I got an honorary degree from Warwick University.

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I'm sitting there with this bit of Warwick honorary thing and it's lovely.

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But all these people are getting up who have clearly been working for three years who go, "Yes!"

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And their family are in the audience going, "Yes!"

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There's Asians and Jamaicans and Africans and women

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and people in wheelchairs getting up and going, "Woo-hoo!"

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I thought, "I want one of those degrees. I don't want this one."

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It took me six years to get it.

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Six years of not watching telly after EastEnders

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or been able to read a book without filling it with sticky notes.

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Basically, the average OU student doesn't get out much.

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I've promised my husband that I won't actually do any more OU for at least a year.

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Back to having a life back.

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That is the biggest thing. I've had no life for four years.

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200,000 students, three weeks of graduations,

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the OU educates on an industrial scale.

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40 years ago, though, the idea of a university open to anyone,

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even without qualifications, was revolutionary.

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And it very nearly didn't happen at all.

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Ah, the '60s. This is what it was all about, wasn't it? The breakdown of old social barriers,

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hippies, festivals, student sit-ins. Although,

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if you actually weren't a student, things were not quite so groovy.

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The vast majority of kids left school at 15.

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Girls like me didn't go to university.

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People from where I lived in north London

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didn't go to university. What is the point?

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In 1960, only a privileged 4% of the population went on to university.

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And most of them were chaps.

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And another thing we've got to do in the field of higher education is to put an end to snobbery.

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-But that was about to change.

-APPLAUSE

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The Britain that is going to be forged

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in the white heat of this revolution

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will be no place for restrictive practices...

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Harold made a speech at the '63 conference, much misunderstood.

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What he actually said was, "We shall all be burned up in the white heat."

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i.e. there will be mass unemployment unless we plan the economy.

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SCHOOL BELL RINGS

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Part of that planning would mean an opening up of higher education.

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Polytechnics, new universities.

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Britain needed graduates.

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Unfortunately for some, this was going to be all too late.

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A lot of very bright people were frustrated

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that they hadn't had the chance to go to university.

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But they were married, had mortgages, couldn't go to college

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and, in any case, there weren't places for them.

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I'd like to...

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study what the intellectuals study.

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There were evening classes, of course.

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Groups like the Workers' Educational Association had helped bring higher education out of the universities.

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But they had limitations.

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They couldn't reach everyone.

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There was something, however, that could.

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By the early '60s, 14 million households had welcomed a new member of the family - television.

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Thank you very much. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

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Welcome to BBC Two's game of words and wit, Call My Bluff.

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Television isn't only a way of watching plays and documentaries and sport and so on.

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It is an information channel

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and thinking of it for the purpose of education was an imaginative idea.

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An idea with an unlikely origin.

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The Russians were winning the space race, and some of their engineers

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had received a university education without attending a university.

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This got the attention of the Labour Party sage called Michael Young.

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It was Michael Young who came up with the idea.

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It was his visit to the Soviet Union in the 1950s

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where he saw what they were doing with radio broadcasting

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to reach very remote communities who needed "continuing professional development", as we now call it.

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That's where Michael Young got the idea and fed it to Harold Wilson.

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Harold had been doing a bit of travelling as well.

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In the land of the TV dinner, he had come across an experimental TV college.

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And it was on a family holiday that his son saw these ideas come together.

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He had been very excited by certain educational experiments

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that were taking place through the Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago.

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I remember being in the Isles of Scilly -

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I was still a student in those days -

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we were at the Isles of Scilly on Easter Day

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and between church and lunch, he suddenly decided

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to map out the whole idea of this university of the air.

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It's designed to provide an opportunity for those who, for one reason or another,

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have not been able to take advantages of higher education now to do so.

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It was reported on by only one newspaper - it was largely ignored.

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And it certainly wasn't part of the Labour Party manifesto for the election in 1964.

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Nobody seemed terribly interested in Wilson's big idea.

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Once in power, he started planning his new university.

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And indifference turn to hostility.

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Certainly, the educational establishment was very much against it, as was the tabloid press.

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"You can't get a degree just by watching television."

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The Civil Service was very hostile.

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The Civil Service wanted at one stage to turn it into the sixth form of the air.

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They couldn't bear the idea that the public should be able to be educated.

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Even among his on party, Wilson wasn't feeling much love.

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I think there was a bit of a view

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on the part of some people

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that this was all going to be for middle-class women.

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These were the people who had missed out in the 1950s.

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Wilson's University of the air had become a Cinderella of a project in need of a fairy godmother.

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And it got one - Jennie Lee.

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The degree of freedom that it will give to creative intelligence...

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She was the widow of Nye Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service.

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Jennie Lee was

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a miner's daughter who came out of the Independent Labour Party -

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the heart and soul in the campaigning tradition of Labour.

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Able-bodied men and women...

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She was an MP at the age of 24, before she was old enough to vote in 1928.

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During the '30s, she married Nye Bevan

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and it was only on his death, and Harold Wilson, possibly as a wreath for Nye,

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that he asked her to become First Minister for the Arts.

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And then secondly, to take over his pet project, which was a university of the air.

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The Prime Minister said, "For God's sake, will you take on this university project?"

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And I said, "Harold, I'll take it on on the same conditions as the arts,

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"that you'll back me when I need money."

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He never let me down.

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I think I only met Jennie Lee once,

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and then really I was there just to be indoctrinated, really.

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I mean, she just sprayed herself over me, as it were.

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She was a wonderful woman.

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She was an icon. She was there for the spirit, for the ethos.

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My father's view was that television and other distance learning techniques

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might be used for diplomas or for individual courses,

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and Jennie Lee's view was, from the very beginning,

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that it should be a full-scale university

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and a university where the standard had to be as good as any other university,

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otherwise it wouldn't be taken seriously.

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Lift-off.

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We have lift-off on Apollo 11.

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And they're in orbit.

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Two and a half.

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Four forward. Houston... the Eagle has landed.

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1969, the year of the first Moon landing,

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and the University of the Air took off,

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although it was now, by royal charter, the Open University.

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And its troubles were far from over.

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As political battles were being played out on the streets of Britain,

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the OU faced one of its own.

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With a general election in 1970,

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it looked likely from the polls that a Conservative government would come in,

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and Iain Macleod, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer,

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had made it very clear he was going to scrap it.

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The old system made sense in the circumstances of the 1940s.

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The OU couldn't be Labour's pet project any more.

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It was down to the academics to prove its worth.

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And Walter Perry, Vice-Chancellor-elect of the Open University,

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one of his jobs was to persuade Jennie to stand back

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and allow him to depoliticise the Open University from being simply a Labour instrument.

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Walter Perry was a heavyweight academic and another no-nonsense Scot.

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Anyone who came in an atmosphere of scepticism

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was putting his or her career on the chopping block, as it were.

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He exuded toughness. He looked physically tough,

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and when you were there, spoke with a Scots accent -

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"I want this and I want that." And that was fine.

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He was fighting his corner, and he did it very effectively.

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And round one was a meeting with a future Education Secretary,

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the politician who stopped free milk in schools - Margaret Thatcher.

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And he argued fiercely with Margaret Thatcher

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and he thought, at the end of it, he'd blown it.

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He was pulling his hair out. He wouldn't survive an incoming Tory government.

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And they said, "No, it was just what she wanted.

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"You gave her the arguments, facts, statistics, you were robust.

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"She'll run with it." As indeed she did.

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Perry had proved they were serious-minded.

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The Queen has asked me to form the next government.

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All they needed now were students.

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They had expected 25,000.

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40,000 applied.

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It was the biggest intake of any British university. They built their own post office.

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Of course, the last thing you'd want when you'd 30 tonnes of teaching material to mail out

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is a postal strike.

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Guess what.

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Are you prepared to stay out until we have a settlement?

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CROWD: Yes! # We ain't coming back... #

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There was a postal strike of seven weeks. That meant it all had to be privately delivered through vans

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and so on. Walter Perry, the Vice-Chancellor, was one moment

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negotiating funding, the next rolling his sleeves up

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and helping pack boxes of material to be sent out to local study centres

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to beat the post office strike.

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So what kind of people had signed up?

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A great comedian,

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Johnny Kennedy. Johnny Kennedy.

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I know the OU would love to think

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that they're going to attract the working man in his thousands,

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and I don't think they are.

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I think they must reconcile themselves to the fact

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that this will never happen.

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The first time I came up here was because of football...

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Johnny Kennedy joined early on.

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Like me, he did stand-up and had to fit his studies in with gigging, as I did.

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But back in the '70s, hardly anyone knew what the OU was.

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I'm reading my book and they're saying, "What's that you're reading?"

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They think it's the Playboy annual usually.

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When they find out it's something to do with university, they sort of shy away.

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"What will you do when Jesus comes to Liverpool?"

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And somebody wrote underneath, "Move Kevin Keegan to inside-left."

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'Today, I wonder how he feels about it all.'

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I was just an ordinary working-class kid in Liverpool.

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I took the 11-plus exam and passed it and went to a grammar school,

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which I loved, and that's where I was first introduced to Shakespeare.

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But when it came time to go into the sixth form,

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my mum and dad didn't see any point in going into a sixth form.

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They needed me to earn some money.

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I think our generation and the generation before of parents wouldn't think about...

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of working-class parents, wouldn't think about pushing their kids that way.

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I really did feel cheated by that.

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-I'd gone down roads that I would not have gone down if I'd gone to a conventional university.

-Uh-huh.

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And the OU was going to put that right.

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I was going to get the degree that I deserved.

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Stand by, please.

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Elbow patches freshly ironed, and hair on standby,

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in January 1971,

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the Open University was finally open.

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And cue.

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Good morning, and a very happy New Year to all of you.

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And everybody was going to get a look-in on this university.

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Now, do you think that that is what's going to happen on the Moon?

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I think that's pretty clear what each of these vectors represents.

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Then it's a simple matter for you to find a restriction on this line h.

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Then taking a little grease, put it on an eyelash...if I can find one,

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and get the eyelash into the grease at the end.

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Right, that's how you make the micro-needle.

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I'd like to consider the features that you might say make up the new and exciting Mannheim sound.

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But strangely, not a kipper tie in sight.

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I think you'll agree that's a pretty complicated motion.

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In the days when there were only three TV channels, and they weren't on all day,

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the OU had found a home on the youngest and grooviest.

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In Conversations For Tomorrow,

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JB Priestley entertains two distinguished guests to dinner.

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Part of the mission of BBC2 was to put further education on television -

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evening classes for the nation.

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Let the vegetables just sweat for about ten minutes.

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The OU programmes had been more or less imposed on the fledgling BBC2,

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and the new controller HAD to find a place for them.

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I wanted my further education programmes to be very attractive.

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I didn't want to start off with

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some really boring programme about quadratic equations.

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These are the only two possibilities.

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So I had the invidious position of having to say,

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"I want these hours to do general programmes

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"and I will stick Open University programmes

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"somewhere where most BBC2 viewers won't mind."

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These were programmes for where the sun don't shine.

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I expect you regard this as all rather trivial.

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Kepler's study of planetary motion...

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And when showbiz met academia, it wasn't always a happy marriage.

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Colin Robinson directed some of the first programmes.

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We were given the studios which News had just vacated at Alexandra Palace.

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It was stripped of gear, so our engineers had to go out on a lorry,

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literally, and scrounge bits of kit from other bits of the Beeb

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to put together a black and white studio.

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The OU might have been paying for the programmes, but the BBC were calling the shots.

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In social sciences,

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we're using television essentially for three purposes.

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I thought it was very difficult at times,

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because the BBC was an established,

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well-recognised, well-thought-of institution, and the OU was not.

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We said, "We're making the programmes," and I did have conflicts with academics over that.

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Right down to the detail of them saying,

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"I will give my lecture," in effect, and we would say, "Well, no."

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The student, he's never heard the story before and he's on his own.

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He's sitting there with the telly. The telly's only eight feet away.

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There's you and there's him. There's nobody else.

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One example of what I call "BBC bullying" in a way.

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I was sitting up here and I had a phone call from the producer.

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Said, "Mike we've got a crisis.

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Jim Barber is refusing to take off his shirt, which is brown.

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"We cannot have a programme with a brown shirt."

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And I said, "Surely you can get somebody to..."

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He said, "You've got to be here, in Alexandra Palace.

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"Otherwise I'll wipe the programme.

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"That's 40,000 quid gone."

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They were academics. They were teachers.

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They were not expecting to be used as puppets in a TV studio.

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Drove all the way down to Alexandra Palace. When I got there,

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of course he'd changed his shirt for a blue shirt with one of the technicians.

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Don't expect a conventional documentary television programme.

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The other thing that is remarkable now is that it was all so crude.

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That vector represents...

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A bit tricky, actually.

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Very primitive models, graphics where you had to pull bits of cardboard and they would fall over.

0:20:100:20:15

It was hilarious, in many senses.

0:20:150:20:17

They were not there to seduce people into knowledge.

0:20:170:20:22

"I will tell you what a quadratic equation is and this is what it is."

0:20:220:20:26

Except that this time I want to solve it using orthogonality.

0:20:260:20:29

You rehearsed for two days.

0:20:290:20:32

And then, in the last hour, you then shot the whole thing.

0:20:320:20:38

He was showing this damned thing off to the left. It looked awful.

0:20:380:20:41

The programmes were 25 minutes and we had an hour to get things right.

0:20:410:20:45

Take three. Go on, let's do it again.

0:20:450:20:47

It's much easier to do it now.

0:20:470:20:49

'Very fraught, very stressful in that hour.'

0:20:490:20:52

The senior producer was, I thought, particularly obnoxious in regard to this.

0:20:520:20:57

So you had a sense of family, we had a sense of family - yours was a dysfunctional one.

0:20:570:21:01

Last time we ended in a state of confusion, to say the least.

0:21:010:21:05

The television programmes are simply the cherry on the cake.

0:21:090:21:12

I mean, the hard grafting... is done quite differently.

0:21:120:21:16

It's got nothing to do with television.

0:21:160:21:19

The brains of the OU operation were 45 miles up the motorway

0:21:200:21:24

in a place that almost no-one had heard of until the '70s.

0:21:240:21:27

Wouldn't it be nice if all cities were like Milton Keynes?

0:21:270:21:31

The grid system is based on roads spaced one kilometre apart.

0:21:400:21:45

It will provide a uniformly good accessibility throughout the whole area.

0:21:450:21:51

I didn't really have much connection with Milton Keynes when I started to study with the Open University

0:21:510:21:56

simply because they don't have students at Walton Hall, and you only really post essays here.

0:21:560:22:01

I used to go and watch Alexei Sayle back in the day when he used to take the piss out of Milton Keynes,

0:22:010:22:07

and he would slightly tease the town planners and say they had to...

0:22:070:22:11

they named things like, you know, the Gary Glitter Estate and the Dave Clark Five Roundabout.

0:22:110:22:17

Bay City Rollers Boulevard.

0:22:190:22:21

A new town for a new way of thinking.

0:22:270:22:29

If only it were that noble.

0:22:290:22:31

Basically, they thought the Open University should start in a stately home of Britain.

0:22:310:22:36

Then an ideology arose around it that this was all about sending signals about a new university in a new town.

0:22:360:22:42

It wasn't, actually. It was just available, it fitted, and therefore they went for it.

0:22:420:22:46

In those days, the whole campus was a sort of building site,

0:22:460:22:51

and there was so much mud around that members of staff were issued

0:22:510:22:55

with slippers they had to wear around the buildings so as not to spread mud around the place.

0:22:550:23:00

It was very difficult to find,

0:23:000:23:03

and one day I wasn't being very bright

0:23:030:23:06

and I seemed to be going round and round the same roundabouts

0:23:060:23:10

and there was a little old lady standing by one of them and she thought

0:23:100:23:16

I was stopping to give her a lift cos it wasn't a nice day.

0:23:160:23:19

But I said, "Can you tell me where the Open University is?"

0:23:190:23:23

She said, "I don't bleeding well care!"

0:23:230:23:26

Here was a university that most people would have struggled to recognise.

0:23:320:23:36

For a start, there were no teenagers trying to find where the bar was or sign up for Drama Soc.

0:23:360:23:43

Just a lot of academics writing lectures for students

0:23:430:23:46

they would probably never meet.

0:23:460:23:49

Frank, could you summarise what we talked about at that meeting?

0:23:490:23:52

The most definite thing that came out was a suggestion...

0:23:520:23:55

There we were. We had a course team. We had to make a course. Nobody knew how you did this.

0:23:550:24:00

Academics were having to bring out into the open

0:24:000:24:03

their lectures and other materials and they got published.

0:24:030:24:07

Actually, the university did quite a lot to lift the standard of teaching throughout the university system.

0:24:070:24:12

Units two to three, Hardy And His Influence.

0:24:120:24:14

Not too happy about that title.

0:24:140:24:16

'And we had to improvise'

0:24:160:24:18

every aspect of the whole system,

0:24:180:24:20

what sort of course materials are appropriate

0:24:200:24:23

for the part-time, distant learner.

0:24:230:24:26

Teaching science by post was particularly tricky.

0:24:280:24:32

Rock samples for the Earth Sciences course can't be discreetly chipped off with a hammer.

0:24:320:24:37

The founding fathers

0:24:370:24:39

had to put their thinking caps on and really get round the problems

0:24:390:24:43

of students who weren't used to handling scientific equipment.

0:24:430:24:47

And this is a McArthur microscope. It's very cleverly designed

0:24:470:24:51

and you look down there,

0:24:510:24:53

and lo and behold, it opens up another world.

0:24:530:24:57

This was part of a big home experiment kit.

0:24:570:24:59

The answer was the mother of all chemistry sets -

0:25:040:25:09

a lab in a box.

0:25:090:25:11

Inside those kits were glassware,

0:25:120:25:15

chemicals, brains, sheep's brains, so that students could look at the cellular patterns.

0:25:150:25:22

We'd have a delivery of 7,000 sheep's brains to the campus every year.

0:25:220:25:27

I'm told these apocryphal stories about people being brought in to cut these sheep's brains up.

0:25:270:25:33

We became very unpopular with the Post Office.

0:25:330:25:35

I'm honestly not quite sure what one is going to do with it at this stage.

0:25:350:25:40

In the early days, we sent students sound recorders through the post,

0:25:400:25:44

because people didn't have cassette recorders.

0:25:440:25:47

Now we have them in the bathroom, the car... Not then. We even sent them slide rules.

0:25:470:25:51

Do you know what a slide rule is?

0:25:510:25:54

Do you want to see an OU slide rule?

0:25:540:25:56

There's an OU slide rule.

0:25:560:25:58

No-one had calculators, no-one had computers.

0:25:580:26:01

We had to send this stuff through the post.

0:26:010:26:03

Fashions came...

0:26:100:26:13

and went, thankfully.

0:26:130:26:15

.625.

0:26:180:26:19

But the OU looked as if it was still stuck in the past.

0:26:190:26:23

And the 654...

0:26:230:26:24

We made programmes knowing that they would last at least two, three or four years.

0:26:240:26:29

What we didn't realise in the early days was that budgets would not be available to remake courses

0:26:290:26:35

and least of all to remake what was probably the most expensive part of the course - television.

0:26:350:26:40

So, many programmes, made in the days of black and white,

0:26:400:26:43

went out for many, many years afterwards and became the butt of comedians' jokes.

0:26:430:26:47

Giving us a resultant modular quantity of 0.567359.

0:26:470:26:53

Now, this should begin to give us some clues...

0:26:530:26:55

Sorry, Brian, I'm sorry...

0:26:550:26:59

What's happening?

0:26:590:27:00

-LAUGHING

-You said 0.567359.

0:27:000:27:05

-Oh, no, I didn't, did I?

-Yes.

0:27:050:27:07

It should be 0.567395.

0:27:070:27:11

I don't believe it! Oh, no!

0:27:110:27:14

BOTH LAUGH

0:27:140:27:17

Oh! BLEEP!

0:27:170:27:19

Oh, Christ! BLEEP!

0:27:190:27:22

BLEEP! BLEEP!

0:27:220:27:24

You'd come in from some working men's club and you'd be tired, you'd had a long drive

0:27:240:27:29

and it was on in the middle of the... I didn't like that at all.

0:27:290:27:33

There was a man with a very big knot in his tie

0:27:330:27:35

and Johnny Kennedy hair and sideburns talking about quantum physics.

0:27:350:27:39

What will we use for alpha particles?

0:27:390:27:41

All right, stop it.

0:27:410:27:43

I watched it because it was comical, but no, it wasn't for me, basically.

0:27:430:27:49

A visual peg on which to hang the detailed mathematical arguments...

0:27:490:27:53

We did have the famous Arthur Marwick, who was the historian,

0:27:530:27:57

and he was known for his cravats.

0:27:570:27:59

What is its historical significance?

0:27:590:28:01

You'd watch just to see how times he changed his cravat.

0:28:010:28:04

But they do not need any obscure theory.

0:28:040:28:07

We dressed as we would have dressed if we'd been at a normal university.

0:28:070:28:12

To illustrate in visual terms the theoretical work which is discussed in the correspondence material.

0:28:120:28:19

Most people had not been to a university, so they didn't know how lecturers looked.

0:28:190:28:24

But just let me quickly remind you how it goes.

0:28:240:28:27

'I hadn't done anything like that before.'

0:28:270:28:29

I think my programmes were competent.

0:28:290:28:31

Some of my colleagues were real naturals and tended

0:28:310:28:34

eventually to do far more than their fair share because they did it so well.

0:28:340:28:39

We're all accustomed to getting and spending money,

0:28:390:28:41

but why should somebody give something useful

0:28:410:28:44

in exchange for pieces of paper and scraps of metal?

0:28:440:28:47

Here's one way in which money changes hands.

0:28:470:28:49

Could I have a whisky and ginger, please?

0:28:490:28:51

I was teaching in Northern Ireland in 1970 in a college of further education, in east Belfast,

0:28:540:29:00

and I saw an advert for part-time tutors

0:29:000:29:02

for the Open University, and it had just begun.

0:29:020:29:05

Whether you despise it or desire it just for itself or for what it can buy...

0:29:050:29:10

'I was a complete amateur.'

0:29:100:29:12

I had no idea how television programmes were made,

0:29:120:29:15

one end of a television camera from another.

0:29:150:29:18

I was quite shy.

0:29:180:29:20

It was quite an uphill struggle for me to do all that.

0:29:200:29:23

Nowadays, most business is done by handing over cheques rather than by passing over notes and coins.

0:29:230:29:30

The OU has always been a boffin's paradise

0:29:320:29:35

and, as the technology got more exciting, so did the sets,

0:29:350:29:40

while the presenters...

0:29:400:29:42

Even with simple queries,

0:29:430:29:46

the SQL processor needs to do quite a lot of work.

0:29:460:29:49

And then came a piece of TV technology that meant you wouldn't have to try and stay awake.

0:29:530:29:58

This old joke about Open University programmes going out at 2am, 3am,

0:30:000:30:05

well, when VCRs came in - video cassette recorders - that was no longer necessary.

0:30:050:30:11

You could send stuff to students, they could use it,

0:30:130:30:16

you could even give them instructions and say,

0:30:160:30:19

"I want you to play from here to here, then I want you to stop, read this, do this bit," and so on.

0:30:190:30:24

It was interactive before interactivity became a buzzword.

0:30:240:30:28

When I first got a video,

0:30:280:30:30

I couldn't actually record them.

0:30:300:30:32

For some reason, I couldn't manage to do that.

0:30:320:30:35

Remembering to set, whether it was

0:30:350:30:37

12am or 12pm and all that sort of thing, getting it wrong!

0:30:370:30:40

It was this issue about how many people had VCRs,

0:30:400:30:44

at what point could you say, "Yes, now we can send this out,

0:30:440:30:48

"because we can expect students to have this kind of technology"?

0:30:480:30:52

The OU wasn't the only ongoing experiment in education.

0:30:540:30:59

The polytechnics were up and running.

0:31:010:31:03

Universities like Keele and Sussex were creating new ways of teaching.

0:31:030:31:08

More teenagers than ever were starting degree courses.

0:31:080:31:11

And just down the road, another controversial project opened up shop.

0:31:110:31:17

...is among the detachment of dons who've dropped this latest bombshell

0:31:170:31:22

into the shock-ridden world of higher education.

0:31:220:31:24

The University of Buckingham was founded by a group of scholars,

0:31:240:31:27

mainly Oxford scholars, who believed

0:31:270:31:29

the time had come for Britain to have

0:31:290:31:32

a university independent of state funding.

0:31:320:31:35

-Elitist?

-Elitist, I regard as a term of praise.

0:31:350:31:38

The Open University is quite socialistic in its inspiration.

0:31:380:31:42

We're the exact opposite, we're quite free market in our inspiration,

0:31:420:31:46

and the parallel is that we are the two universities, Buckingham and the Open University,

0:31:460:31:51

that both come top every year of the National Students Survey.

0:31:510:31:55

So what's the one thing we have in common?

0:31:550:31:57

Half of the first 75 students have come from abroad to take part in this experiment in higher education.

0:31:570:32:03

They'll pay around £5,000 in fees and expenses to get a Buckingham-style education.

0:32:030:32:09

We're the only two universities who, for the last 30, 40 years in Britain,

0:32:090:32:13

have systematically charged realistic fees.

0:32:130:32:16

At a time when 18-year-olds could go to state-run universities for free,

0:32:170:32:21

the OU, open to all, was making its students pay.

0:32:210:32:26

Up to £500 for a degree!

0:32:260:32:28

Not to be sniffed at when the average income in the early '70s was less than £3,000 per year.

0:32:280:32:34

I feel that a lot of working-class people will steer away from the OU because of the cost of the degree.

0:32:360:32:43

To be fair to the OU, I don't think it was ever part of the original business plan.

0:32:430:32:47

They didn't fulfil, and part-time students still don't fulfil,

0:32:470:32:50

the criteria by which you get full grants. They were forced to charge fees.

0:32:500:32:54

They didn't pay full-cost fees,

0:32:540:32:56

but they still had to make a substantial contribution.

0:32:560:32:59

I always argued, throughout my time rather later, that it was wrong.

0:32:590:33:05

Of course, that has all changed subsequently.

0:33:050:33:09

OK, you can switch it on now.

0:33:090:33:10

Finding the money isn't the only challenge OU students have faced.

0:33:100:33:14

Turn it off, love, it's flooding! All right...

0:33:140:33:17

They've always been trusted, more or less, to get on with it.

0:33:170:33:21

It used to get us into trouble, occasionally. I'd get a phone call from the Devon and Cornwall police

0:33:210:33:26

to say they'd arrested one of our students on suspicion of making amphetamines.

0:33:260:33:30

They'd raided his home and found his experiment kit, but what made it worse

0:33:300:33:34

was that we'd written a course unit that went out with the course called Making Drugs.

0:33:340:33:39

They put two and two together and made six.

0:33:390:33:41

I had to go and appear in court to say that there's no way

0:33:410:33:45

that using the chemicals in that box could make amphetamines.

0:33:450:33:49

If you could, then I... I wouldn't be working here, would I?

0:33:490:33:52

You may get some idea of the frustration

0:33:540:33:57

and of the excitement of scientific research.

0:33:570:34:00

Just when I thought I could do it, along came the second unit,

0:34:000:34:04

and that was on relativity. That really floored me.

0:34:040:34:07

Mike Pence came on the television to tell us we could do it.

0:34:070:34:11

I'm going to try and shoot a pellet into the tube on top of the glider,

0:34:110:34:15

which is there to catch the pellet so it doesn't go flying around the studio,

0:34:150:34:19

slaughtering everybody and sundry.

0:34:190:34:21

And I thought, he's mad!

0:34:210:34:23

He's nice, but he's quite mad!

0:34:230:34:25

Then there's the question of finding the time to study.

0:34:260:34:29

What with work, family, looking after your 12 children...

0:34:290:34:34

I wouldn't have done it if they'd seemed to be reluctant.

0:34:340:34:38

We helped you while you were doing it.

0:34:380:34:40

Oh, yes, they helped a lot.

0:34:400:34:41

'One of the things students find quite hard'

0:34:410:34:44

isn't that they're managing themselves,

0:34:440:34:46

but that they're either managing children, partners or friends.

0:34:460:34:49

I always say to my students,

0:34:490:34:51

"Real life has a habit of getting in the way of Open University study."

0:34:510:34:55

I try not to let my studies interfere with family live too much,

0:34:550:35:00

so I do most of me work while I'm at work.

0:35:000:35:04

While I'm driving me bus, I go through my texts

0:35:040:35:07

and all my OU work is done in this way, actually on the bus.

0:35:070:35:12

An individual living in complete isolation, like Robinson Crusoe,

0:35:120:35:17

must do everything for himself.

0:35:170:35:20

You're on your own a lot of the time.

0:35:200:35:22

I get up sometimes before 5am and study then and then go to work.

0:35:220:35:26

I work as a dental nurse,

0:35:260:35:28

and I've had my notes in my pocket, basically.

0:35:280:35:31

Sometimes I've had a situation where I had to take a laptop into the hospital.

0:35:310:35:36

I didn't want to defer my exam, my project.

0:35:360:35:40

So I just had to do it at the hospital.

0:35:400:35:43

I study better alone anyway.

0:35:430:35:44

You're not joining the Open University to party.

0:35:440:35:47

You're joining it to get that education

0:35:470:35:50

and the qualifications, or in my case, just to keep the cogs well oiled.

0:35:500:35:54

20 hours of study a week can seriously damage your social life.

0:35:540:35:58

You can't even watch the TV like anybody else.

0:35:580:36:01

How about you there?

0:36:010:36:03

Well, can you repeat the question again?

0:36:030:36:06

You need SOME human contact.

0:36:060:36:09

That's where the OU tutors come in.

0:36:090:36:11

The first OU tutor I came into contact with was a Yorkshireman,

0:36:110:36:15

and I remember he said, "If you think I'm going to waste my time

0:36:150:36:21

"marking a load of crap on these assignments, you've got another thing coming!"

0:36:210:36:26

A lot of students come and they say at the beginning,

0:36:260:36:29

"I've come because I was in a reading group, I love reading and I read about three books per week."

0:36:290:36:34

And when it comes to it, they realise

0:36:340:36:37

that reading and being able to write then an academic essay on it

0:36:370:36:43

is very different from just the pleasure.

0:36:430:36:45

The extraordinary thing about the students was that, compared to us when we were at university,

0:36:450:36:51

Open University students were given reading lists and they read absolutely everything on the list.

0:36:510:36:57

They would come prepared with questions.

0:36:570:37:00

I felt on my mettle all the time.

0:37:000:37:03

I was studying to keep up with my students.

0:37:030:37:06

They were very dedicated.

0:37:060:37:08

The biggest socio-economic group was school teachers,

0:37:080:37:12

because school teachers, if they had a degree

0:37:120:37:15

as opposed to a teaching certificate, got an immediate increase in pay.

0:37:150:37:20

-If I didn't get an A...

-You wanted to know why.

-Yes, exactly.

0:37:200:37:24

All that work I put in, clearly I got something wrong there.

0:37:240:37:27

The essay was well written and I thought I'd made all the main points...

0:37:270:37:31

Johnny, you're so competitive! I can't believe how competitive you are. You're a nightmare.

0:37:310:37:37

I'll tell you how competitive I am.

0:37:370:37:40

I used to go to summer school and work.

0:37:400:37:42

Ah, the summer schools.

0:37:430:37:45

When conventional universities closed down for the holidays,

0:37:450:37:49

the OU students moved in and started to act like...

0:37:490:37:52

students.

0:37:520:37:54

The summer schools were special.

0:37:540:37:56

Not only did they offer a week long of very intense activity,

0:37:560:37:59

particularly for scientists working in their labs...

0:37:590:38:02

Cleavage along parallel planes...

0:38:020:38:05

But also a lot of our students hadn't been away from home for a week without their partner.

0:38:060:38:12

I don't think any research has been done on the number of marriages

0:38:120:38:15

that broke up as a result of studying for the Open University.

0:38:150:38:19

It goes far too fast, doesn't it?

0:38:200:38:22

I remember one year, all the tutors got a letter from the vice-chancellor

0:38:220:38:26

saying we mustn't sleep with the students.

0:38:260:38:28

I was 25 or 26, my students were much older than me.

0:38:280:38:31

It was unlikely I was going to seduce them, I think.

0:38:310:38:34

It was quite eye opening to a set-in-his-ways academic.

0:38:340:38:40

The showering facilities were, as a matter of principle, shared.

0:38:400:38:43

So I kind of wandered in, having found my way to the campus,

0:38:430:38:48

to discover a very attractive girl suddenly appear from the shower.

0:38:480:38:53

I thought, "Good heavens!"

0:38:530:38:54

The students had paid to go there,

0:38:560:38:58

they were determined to get as much out of it.

0:38:580:39:00

They'd even ask you questions on the dance floor.

0:39:000:39:03

There was always a disco on the Thursday when I'd shake my booty.

0:39:030:39:06

But somebody would ask you for a dance only because

0:39:060:39:09

they had a question they wanted to ask you, as a tutor.

0:39:090:39:13

These were hardcore learners,

0:39:150:39:18

and it was the summer schools that finally convinced

0:39:180:39:21

a sceptical academic world that the OU weren't muckin' about.

0:39:210:39:25

There was considerable doubt,

0:39:250:39:27

and if an academic's only contact with the Open University

0:39:270:39:30

was to see a television programme or hear a radio broadcast,

0:39:300:39:35

that was a limited view.

0:39:350:39:37

The summer schools really displayed the university at its best,

0:39:370:39:41

because so many of them were staffed by a conventional academics.

0:39:410:39:44

They realised they were dealing with a body of students that was equal,

0:39:440:39:50

if not superior, to the ones they normally dealt with.

0:39:500:39:54

ANNA FORD: I think the Open University created enormous change in some people's lives.

0:39:540:39:59

I had one or two women who came to me

0:39:590:40:02

saying their husbands had told them

0:40:020:40:04

they didn't want them to go on studying any longer,

0:40:040:40:07

because they were spending too much time over their books

0:40:070:40:10

and not enough time looking after their husbands.

0:40:100:40:13

The Open University is a bit of a toil,

0:40:130:40:17

rather like having another bloke, but you can't chuck him out!

0:40:170:40:21

Some changes were more dramatic than others.

0:40:210:40:25

I was in prison.

0:40:250:40:27

I was in solitary confinement.

0:40:270:40:29

I was a very angry young man. I was involved in gangs

0:40:290:40:32

in north London. I was robbing banks.

0:40:320:40:36

I served 13 years out of 20.

0:40:360:40:38

Bobby Cummines now advises the government on prison issues

0:40:380:40:43

but, 25 years ago, he was in Parkhurst.

0:40:430:40:45

I used to read a lot in prison and I used to listen to Radio 4.

0:40:470:40:51

I loved the debates.

0:40:510:40:53

I never did that outside. I started becoming inquiring about myself -

0:40:530:40:57

you know, why was I different from everyone else?

0:40:570:41:00

I started going to education classes.

0:41:000:41:02

He said, "Why don't you do an Open University? You've got the time."

0:41:020:41:06

I had lots of time on my hands.

0:41:060:41:08

I thought, "Here I am, sitting with a pen.

0:41:080:41:10

"In my life previously, I'd be sitting with a gun."

0:41:100:41:13

It was that bizarre!

0:41:130:41:15

I thought, "What am I doing? I can't really be a student!"

0:41:150:41:19

And there I was, and someone had given me full marks for my assignment,

0:41:190:41:25

and it was such a buzz. It was better than robbing banks.

0:41:250:41:28

It was a buzz and a half

0:41:280:41:30

-to know

-I

-could do it, not just some posh kid.

0:41:300:41:32

It liberated me from crime, because I knew I could do something else.

0:41:320:41:37

# Let me tell you about a girl who's breaking my heart

0:41:400:41:45

# She decided lately to get smart

0:41:450:41:49

# But now, whenever I go round to call

0:41:490:41:54

# She's reading Lawrence and TH Huxley

0:41:540:41:59

# With the Open University. #

0:41:590:42:03

One of the unexpected changes for me

0:42:100:42:13

was that the OU rekindled my love of libraries.

0:42:130:42:16

So, in 2000, I sent off for the prospectus

0:42:190:42:22

and I was blown away, really, by the huge range of materials.

0:42:220:42:26

They send you all these course materials

0:42:260:42:30

with titles like A210 and A171 and A300.

0:42:300:42:33

It's like they're sending you motorways through the post!

0:42:330:42:36

I knew about libraries cos my Auntie Pearl made me join when I was nine.

0:42:360:42:39

I had to read Little Black Sambo endlessly.

0:42:390:42:42

And...I got used to the idea of going to Dudley Library on occasion

0:42:420:42:45

but then, throughout school, I didn't really have much to do with libraries.

0:42:450:42:50

Rejoining the slipstream of education, for me, in 2000,

0:42:500:42:54

reintroduced me to this whole world of - what is a library for?

0:42:540:42:58

It actually takes the fear away.

0:42:580:43:00

You've got all these books,

0:43:000:43:02

people who know where the books are supposed to go.

0:43:020:43:05

All the information you need is right here in the library.

0:43:050:43:08

It's more tactile than just looking things up online too.

0:43:080:43:13

We'll look at this in more detail in the next programme.

0:43:130:43:16

# To cut a long story short I lost my mind... #

0:43:160:43:21

The '80s, and the OU were once again on the political radar,

0:43:210:43:25

this time because of their teaching material.

0:43:250:43:27

At a time when books were being banned or burned,

0:43:270:43:32

when you were counter-culture or cash culture,

0:43:320:43:35

for or against,

0:43:350:43:37

the Open University found itself... against.

0:43:370:43:41

When the real conflict took place

0:43:410:43:43

between the Conservative government and the OU

0:43:430:43:46

was actually when Keith Joseph was

0:43:460:43:48

the Secretary of State for Education, and when they became concerned

0:43:480:43:54

that there were all these left-wing Marxist academics there

0:43:540:43:59

who were polluting the minds of the students

0:43:590:44:02

by this left-wing ideology and left-wing propaganda.

0:44:020:44:07

Would you like to tell me what this is?

0:44:080:44:10

-A book.

-And its title is Soviet history.

0:44:100:44:14

It's part of the reading from my course.

0:44:140:44:16

Do I have to draw you a picture?

0:44:160:44:18

Oh, would you? With little lambs running through the hills...

0:44:180:44:21

Ann, I'm in deadly earnest. Can't you see the chain?

0:44:210:44:25

-Moscow, Ostend, Dover, Milton Keynes.

-Long walk.

0:44:250:44:29

Milton Keynes, Ann - the home of the Open University.

0:44:290:44:32

Don't you realise, you have become a pawn of the Kremlin!

0:44:320:44:34

'There were course team meetings where'

0:44:340:44:36

you actually had to sit down and everybody had to answer the question,

0:44:360:44:41

is there Marxist bias in this unit, this television programme?

0:44:410:44:45

They had to take a vote.

0:44:450:44:46

Well, I think the answer is no.

0:44:460:44:48

It did cause quite a lot of worry, I think,

0:44:480:44:53

and Christodoulou was the Secretary of the University,

0:44:530:44:56

so it cost him his knighthood.

0:44:560:44:58

In some ways, it was a very fruitful time to be here,

0:44:580:45:01

because there was that sense of pushing against the status quo.

0:45:010:45:05

The TV operation had moved to the campus at Milton Keynes,

0:45:050:45:10

but they'd already raised a few eyebrows.

0:45:100:45:13

Isn't that the Green Cross Code man?

0:45:130:45:16

..His Lordship and call me Mr Executioner...

0:45:160:45:18

There was a version of The Balcony by Jean Genet,

0:45:180:45:22

and it featured, bizarrely, Darth Vader, Dave Prowse,

0:45:220:45:25

in a sort of cut-down leotard with a whip.

0:45:250:45:28

Hurry up about it. I've got to go and get dressed.

0:45:280:45:31

That did prove a little too meaty, so it was indeed banned for a while.

0:45:310:45:37

It appears that this version of The Balcony was never transmitted, until now,

0:45:370:45:41

and that wasn't the only space cadet they've had on.

0:45:410:45:45

Might there not be some charity in sin to save this brother's life?

0:45:450:45:48

Please you to do it. I'll take it as a peril...

0:45:480:45:51

Later on into the '90s, David Tennant worked with us

0:45:510:45:54

on a series called Conjuring Shakespeare.

0:45:540:45:57

That was interesting, because we went out for that.

0:45:570:45:59

We went to Oxford and shot on location,

0:45:590:46:01

as we did for a play that starred the then relatively unknown Daniel Craig.

0:46:010:46:06

That was The Rover by Aphra Behn.

0:46:060:46:08

It was three and a half hours.

0:46:080:46:11

Had she left me my clothes,

0:46:110:46:12

I have a bill of exchange at home would have saved my credit.

0:46:120:46:16

It was really interesting to work with people

0:46:160:46:19

who you've since seen go on and make really good careers for themselves.

0:46:190:46:23

-What's that? Is it a man or a bird?

-A pig!

0:46:230:46:28

Occasionally, though, what seemed like a good idea on the script just didn't do the job.

0:46:280:46:34

I had one which was quite bizarre. It was the academic's idea.

0:46:340:46:38

-Who are you?

-PIG, or Pig for short.

0:46:380:46:42

It was called the Problem Identification Game - PIG, or Pig for short.

0:46:420:46:46

I don't know what you're on about.

0:46:460:46:48

I thought it was very clever -

0:46:480:46:49

wonderful, full of gags and jokes and so on.

0:46:490:46:52

The students gave it the biggest thumbs-down ever.

0:46:520:46:54

It's more important to begin a journey than to know where you're going.

0:46:540:46:58

"No", said the students, "We don't know what it's about."

0:46:580:47:01

The Open University has to conduct a lot of its business in public,

0:47:030:47:07

for better or worse.

0:47:070:47:09

Like any British university, it has to do research,

0:47:090:47:13

and it was an OU team

0:47:130:47:15

behind the UK's most publicised step into space -

0:47:150:47:19

the Beagle 2 mission to Mars.

0:47:190:47:21

Three more attempts to find Beagle overnight, and three more failures.

0:47:210:47:26

Our best chance of a communication with Mars

0:47:260:47:30

is to wait until Mars Express is available for use.

0:47:300:47:34

Milton Keynes can feel a bit like the deserted set of Space 1999

0:47:340:47:39

but, in dark corners,

0:47:390:47:41

there are researchers handling strange objects.

0:47:410:47:45

Mahesh Anand is one of them.

0:47:450:47:48

This is really heavy. What the heck is it?

0:47:480:47:50

A piece of our solar system which then entered the atmosphere

0:47:500:47:54

of the Earth as a meteorite, which is 4.5 billion years old.

0:47:540:47:58

And you can actually examine little slices of it?

0:47:580:48:01

We also have examples of rocks

0:48:010:48:03

that have come from other planets, such as Mars.

0:48:030:48:06

-No way!

-And our own moon.

0:48:060:48:08

Looks like a stained-glass window.

0:48:080:48:10

-It's like a piece of art, isn't it?

-It's beautiful.

0:48:100:48:13

But you're not looking at the pretty colours.

0:48:130:48:16

There's a point, isn't there?

0:48:160:48:17

The larger picture is that

0:48:170:48:19

we're trying to understand our own place in this universe.

0:48:190:48:23

Not easy to do if your equipment goes missing!

0:48:240:48:26

Mahesh, can you tell me about your involvement with the Beagle mission,

0:48:260:48:31

which, in the public's eyes, was deemed a bit of a failure

0:48:310:48:34

because it didn't actually land?

0:48:340:48:36

I think that we got a lot out of Beagle,

0:48:360:48:38

even though it was not successful in the sense

0:48:380:48:42

that actually it crash-landed, most likely,

0:48:420:48:45

on the surface of Mars and we never heard from it.

0:48:450:48:47

It doesn't write, it doesn't phone...

0:48:470:48:50

Yeah, it doesn't write, it doesn't phone,

0:48:500:48:52

but we must remember that those instruments that were sent on Beagle

0:48:520:48:57

are now being planned to send elsewhere

0:48:570:49:00

in the Solar System exploration missions.

0:49:000:49:03

For example, one package on Beagle was going to look for organic carbon

0:49:030:49:08

and is now being considered by NASA to send it to the Moon.

0:49:080:49:11

The Open University was born out of the Space Age.

0:49:190:49:23

It was driven by new technology.

0:49:240:49:27

While the rest of the world was trying to work out what they had to do with it,

0:49:270:49:32

the Open University already knew.

0:49:320:49:35

They were the first British university to embrace computers...

0:49:350:49:40

CD-ROMs... And it launched them into a whole new kind of space.

0:49:410:49:46

It's almost as though the OU was waiting

0:49:460:49:48

for the invention of the internet.

0:49:480:49:51

When it came, it enabled us to reach people anywhere.

0:49:510:49:54

Television had let students study at home.

0:49:580:50:00

The internet allowed them to get out and do it.

0:50:000:50:04

What we do is just

0:50:040:50:06

write your assignment online and e-mail it.

0:50:060:50:08

I think people would rather be surfing the net for information

0:50:080:50:13

rather than reading books.

0:50:130:50:14

I can do online stuff

0:50:140:50:16

and I appreciate where people are coming from,

0:50:160:50:18

but I just like books. I really like the big thing

0:50:180:50:20

when you're starting a new course and your big parcel comes.

0:50:200:50:24

It's these lovely, new-smelling, wonderful books.

0:50:240:50:26

It's really exciting.

0:50:260:50:28

But if you just turn on the computer and it's all there, you think, what the...?

0:50:280:50:32

With global technology, a global expansion.

0:50:330:50:38

-We're going to have an expedition.

-Yes!

0:50:380:50:40

There are now around 50 open universities in the world.

0:50:420:50:47

The earliest ones were probably in India, where we helped to set up

0:50:470:50:51

the Indira Gandhi National Open University,

0:50:510:50:54

which is now one of the biggest in the world.

0:50:540:50:56

But strangely, the Open University failed in the country

0:50:580:51:02

that gave birth to television teaching, America.

0:51:020:51:05

Their culture is so different. Their learning culture is so different.

0:51:050:51:08

They have virtual university projects sprouting all over the place.

0:51:080:51:13

They don't need an Open University

0:51:130:51:15

in the way that Britain needed one and still does.

0:51:150:51:18

The OU was trying to do what lots of other people were already doing.

0:51:180:51:22

There had to be the question in the potential customer's,

0:51:220:51:25

potential student's mind - why go for this unknown British quantity?

0:51:250:51:29

A US OU you had to be abandoned after two years

0:51:290:51:32

at a cost of £9 million.

0:51:320:51:34

I don't think we're ever going to make the mistake of believing

0:51:340:51:38

that America is a suitable environment for this kind of university.

0:51:380:51:43

Yet it still surprises me

0:51:430:51:44

because it's so successful in other parts of the world.

0:51:440:51:47

A team of five scientists are on a mission to solve

0:51:470:51:51

a series of science challenges.

0:51:510:51:53

On the telly, things were moving on too.

0:51:530:51:56

The Open University had begun to make programmes

0:51:560:51:59

that were not just for its students.

0:51:590:52:02

Together we are - Rough Science.

0:52:020:52:05

-Mike, if you could shout out the angle.

-79.0.

0:52:050:52:08

These were prime-time shows with a brain.

0:52:080:52:11

But hang on, how will this help anybody get a degree?

0:52:110:52:14

The Open University and the BBC thought, let's make programmes

0:52:140:52:18

that are available and accessible to the general public.

0:52:180:52:22

I think that came about as a recognition of

0:52:220:52:25

the responsibility that the Open University has

0:52:250:52:28

to reaching the wider public,

0:52:280:52:29

not just its students who are paying for the courses.

0:52:290:52:32

But it also has an extramural role, if you like.

0:52:320:52:35

Every university has an extramural department.

0:52:350:52:38

Ours just happens to be not just UK-wide

0:52:380:52:41

through the BBC, our relationship with the BBC, but worldwide.

0:52:410:52:45

With a myriad of ways to receive teaching material,

0:52:520:52:55

the TV programmes needed to be less like lessons.

0:52:550:52:59

It led to new, slick-looking co-productions with the BBC.

0:52:590:53:02

The days of the old school were numbered.

0:53:020:53:05

That's over a thousand million sides.

0:53:050:53:08

And in 2006, we said goodbye to a unique bit of television history.

0:53:160:53:21

Nothing to fear, but fear itself.

0:53:210:53:24

We hope that your studies...

0:53:320:53:34

Those late-night broadcasts

0:53:340:53:36

and the production centre at Milton Keynes were no more.

0:53:360:53:40

There was some sadness when those late-night transmissions ended.

0:53:420:53:46

Partly because, almost everywhere you went, you'd find people

0:53:460:53:49

who either knew somebody who'd done an OU course

0:53:490:53:52

or they were doing one, or somebody in their family was,

0:53:520:53:54

and they loved those transmissions. You'd maybe come in late at night,

0:53:540:53:58

after a curry and couldn't quite sleep,

0:53:580:54:00

and people would catch something about Schroedinger's Cat.

0:54:000:54:03

And that kind of created a community.

0:54:030:54:06

Education, education and education.

0:54:080:54:11

40 years ago, the OU was pretty much

0:54:110:54:15

the last chance saloon

0:54:150:54:17

if you'd missed out on university after leaving school.

0:54:170:54:20

Now, British universities compete to attract all sorts of students.

0:54:200:54:26

And everyone pays fees.

0:54:270:54:29

The space-age technology the OU helped pioneer is commonplace.

0:54:300:54:35

Thanks to the internet, we've all become

0:54:350:54:38

distance learners of one sort or another.

0:54:380:54:40

But it's not a university of the internet -

0:54:430:54:45

no more than it was a university of the air when it was launched in 1969.

0:54:450:54:50

The clue is in the name - the Open University.

0:54:500:54:55

Well, it makes an enormous difference to all the people

0:54:550:54:59

who wouldn't be accepted by other universities.

0:54:590:55:02

You must remember, most universities do still have entry criteria.

0:55:020:55:06

The Open University has no entry criteria.

0:55:060:55:10

So about one-third of our students

0:55:100:55:12

wouldn't be accepted by other universities

0:55:120:55:14

and you can be quite sure that makes an enormous difference.

0:55:140:55:18

The reality is, however hard you try to widen access,

0:55:180:55:23

university education is essentially for the privileged classes.

0:55:230:55:27

You may not feel privileged, but compared to others you are.

0:55:270:55:30

Within those parameters, I'd say the OU is probably broadest

0:55:300:55:33

in its social background than any other,

0:55:330:55:36

but probably not nearly as broad as it would like to be.

0:55:360:55:39

Where it really succeeds is picking up the individuals

0:55:390:55:42

for whom the conventional system didn't work so well.

0:55:420:55:45

Every university almost in the world today sees itself

0:55:450:55:48

as a version of the Open University.

0:55:480:55:50

Every single university I'm aware of

0:55:500:55:52

has some form of outreach programme.

0:55:520:55:54

But there's no university that any longer sees itself

0:55:540:55:57

as trapped within their own walls. And it won't be long

0:55:570:56:01

before Oxford, Cambridge and the American Ivory League universities

0:56:010:56:05

begin to similarly reach out.

0:56:050:56:06

I'm at the Barbican. I've got my gown on.

0:56:060:56:08

I walk up onto the stage, David Puttnam gives me my scroll

0:56:080:56:11

and I go, "Yes! This time I've really earned this.

0:56:110:56:15

"This is six years of hard slog."

0:56:150:56:19

Then a year went by.

0:56:190:56:21

And I thought, is that it?

0:56:210:56:23

Is that the end of my learning experience?

0:56:230:56:26

So I decided it wouldn't be.

0:56:260:56:29

Now, I'm doing a master's degree in screenwriting.

0:56:300:56:33

I never would have contemplated that before the OU.

0:56:330:56:36

It's opened up a world of possibilities.

0:56:360:56:39

This uncertain experiment,

0:56:430:56:46

with its roots in Communist Russia, has touched the lives of millions.

0:56:460:56:51

The desire to learn has been rekindled in me.

0:56:530:56:56

I don't intend to stop learning, because I think...

0:56:560:57:00

..learning is everything, really.

0:57:010:57:04

..Comedian, Johnny Kennedy.

0:57:040:57:08

I've always had the ability, but it did give me that second chance.

0:57:080:57:13

It showed me how to use that ability in the most effective way.

0:57:130:57:21

It taught me discipline.

0:57:210:57:23

Open University changes lives.

0:57:230:57:26

If I hadn't done OU, I would've been back robbing banks

0:57:260:57:28

and been banged up for the rest of my life or shot dead.

0:57:280:57:31

One of the things that pulled people together was this common enemy.

0:57:310:57:35

The sceptics who said... they pooh-poohed it.

0:57:350:57:39

Without any doubt it was the greatest achievement of Harold Wilson.

0:57:390:57:43

With 185,000 students now enrolled. 20% overseas.

0:57:430:57:47

Highest student satisfaction of any university.

0:57:470:57:49

My father was really quite amazed and excited

0:57:490:57:52

by quite how much it had grown and how innovative it had been.

0:57:520:57:56

I think Jenny would be really pleased, thrilled and gratified.

0:57:560:58:01

She believed that she had given to Harold Wilson

0:58:010:58:05

a legacy similar to Nye's legacy for the health service.

0:58:050:58:09

You want to get on. We're all very motivated.

0:58:090:58:11

Open University students are extremely motivated.

0:58:110:58:14

If you're no good, you don't pass. You don't get the qualification.

0:58:140:58:18

It's no different to university in that sense. There's just no bar.

0:58:180:58:22

That can be remedied.

0:58:220:58:24

# Suddenly I see

0:58:250:58:27

# This is what I wanna be

0:58:270:58:30

# Suddenly I see

0:58:300:58:32

# Why the hell it means so much to me... #

0:58:320:58:36

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:58:490:58:52

E-mail [email protected]

0:58:520:58:55

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