Life begins for Open University

It’s a happy birthday today as the Open University celebrates its 40th.

With 200,000 students each year, the University is the largest in the UK, and has helped further the career potential of many to whom university may not have been possible.

The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Brenda Gourley, said: “The Open University has turned an educational system devised in another age into a tool of the knowledge society, and used open and distance education to make the world a better place: abandoning entry criteria and using technology has enabled us to provide education to millions of people who might otherwise be condemned
to poverty and hardship. This is an extraordinary record of which the UK should be proud. It has also been achieved while becoming a first-rate university in any terms, standing proudly among its more traditional peers and partners.

“The Open University has not only put social justice at the very heart of what it seeks to do – it is the very stuff of its mission. It has played a real part in shaping the future society in Britain and elsewhere. It has in the process helped many people to realise their dreams.”

Leading the way in technology, the university became the first to offer free downloadable course material via iTunesU.

The university is consistently in the top three of the National Students Survey of Student Satisfaction and had 19 of 25 subjects classed as excellent in the last UK Quality Assurance Agency subject review.