Open University

It's nice to see my employer get a positive mention in the mainstream press. In OU is the solution to student IOU, the Times rightly says "The unsung Open University offers an alternative way of learning without running up debts"

"Tony Blair may barely have noticed that on Wednesday he dropped in on the campus of the Open University. He heard a little about the Huygens space project, which last month made the most distant landing ever of a spacecraft, on Saturn’s moon, Titan. He confided that he was “learning so much” from reading a book on the planets to his son, which says either a great deal about the intelligence of four-year-old Leo or the lack of knowledge of his father. Then it was blast-off time again and Mr Blair took off for the television studio.

So the opportunity for the Prime Minister to laud the achievements of a remarkable institution was wasted. And since the Open University is either too modest, or unskilled in the black arts of public relations, to ensure that its success is loudly hailed, it just saw him off the premises and got back to its business of providing education for anyone who wants it.

Had the OU been more politically and media savvy, it might have taken the opportunity of Mr Blair’s visit to point out that it had just that day finally netted its biggest charitable donation so far and would be putting all £2.75 million of it to work in the cause of furthering education in Africa. That ought to have ensured the OU some plaudits, as Mr Blair battles against Gordon Brown to see who can be the greater friend of that poverty-ridden continent. But the Prime Minister had left before the successful fundraisers even knew he would be arriving...

On the Government’s assessments, the standard of teaching is predominantly classed as excellent and in The Sunday Times’s last set of university league tables the OU ranked fifth, ahead of Oxford. Yet while other university vice-chancellors bemoan their finances and Oxbridge deficits deepen, the OU balances its books. It finished the year to last July with a £4 million surplus, having bolstered its grant income of £174 million with student fees and some outside earnings.

As the convoluted debate on top-up fees raged, the OU continued charging its modest fees to students, providing loans to help them to pay where necessary. The average fees are just £440 a year and a first degree, consisting of six modules, might cost around £3,000. Since most students are earning while they are learning, the money rarely poses a problem.

So why is the Government, with its proclaimed purpose of driving half of all young people to university, not pushing more of them in the direction of the OU instead of the Student Loan Company?"