The Open University needs to make it personal

Ormond Simpson's proposals are right but they cannot be the solution to the massive problem of retention and progression in the OU. They are like putting up an umbrella in the face of a hurricane. In a University where half of new students - the vast majority on fee loans - fail their first year of study or do not progress further, serious questions must be raised about what the OU is for. Is its open access policy as currently operated sustainable? It has to be dishonest and morally bankrupt to recruit students who it knows will fail and leave indebted - how can this be consistent with a WP agenda? For the OU aims to recruit as many students as possible, the vast majority online and without any personal advice and certainly no checks as to whether individuals have the time, skills or knowledge for successful study. Even if the OU doesn't care, the government should mind whether Universities retain (through to completion of their study goals) the WP students they have successfully recruited - or are they too playing the game of an HE system that 'pile them high' but doesn't want to worry about the consequences? Pete Gubbins is right that the increase in cost of OU study and the access to PT loans (some 85% of students entering the University since 2012 are financed by SLC) has dampened the market for part time study at the OU as elsewhere but there is a much wider picture. The OU's V-C Peter Horrocks and others campaign for government support for PT education but what is not mentioned (except perhaps in government circles) is the wider impact on demand for PT adult HE of the massive increase in 18 year olds going to University, now almost 50%. The OU was invented when under 7% of adults had degrees; there was real demand for university level education from skilled and semi skilled workers as well as those in careers which were to become professionalised via accreditation (cf. the OU trained many teachers in its early years). Now there is not only decreasing demand for part time study study but also a far higher proportion of very academically weak students entering through the OU's door (those older students with higher levels of previous educational study who used to study there out of personal interest or for 'leisure' are not now motivated to take out a loan - but they were the ones who completed degrees).