The Politics of Innovation in Great Britain: The Open University

A "model for a new kind of higher education," a "post-bourgeois… mode of intellectual production," the "seeds of radical change," or, more prosaically, a "political gimmick"? The Open University established in 1969 by the Labour government seems to break away from so many traditions in British higher education that no one should be surprised by the extreme nature of the judgments expressed for or against it. After all, how could a university without a campus, without entrance qualifications, without formal classes, and with virtually no face-to-face contact between students and faculty be called a university?… For a great number of observers, the creation of such an institution within the framework of a highly elitist and meritocratic educational system and in a country where there is no firmly implanted "working your way through college" ethos, was truly an epoch-making event. The purpose of this paper, a case study relying on an institution/problem-oriented approach, is to use the establishment of the Open University in Britain to document and evaluate innovations in higher education arrived at through political decisions. Particular attention will be devoted to what the rationale behind the innovation was, who the initiators were, and what groups or factors resisted the innovation. This essay will therefore briefly describe the major characteristics of this venture in postsecondary education and then focus on the politics of the establishment and subsequent development of the Open University.