Is the University Model Broken? | Tim Blackman

“So the university doesn't choose the student, the student chooses the university.”

“The Open Mission is just written through everybody like words in a stick of rock,”

“well, you know, what's the carbon footprint of our graduates?”

“we are producing too many people with the wrong kind of qualification taken at the wrong point in their lives.”

“Well, at the moment, frankly, academia is just one of these knowledge bubbles,”

“You know, that nature is free, but it isn't free.”

“We borrow to consume rather than just borrow to invest. We should not be borrowing to consume.”

“We're passing on depleted assets to the next generation. And, you know, that's just fundamentally wrong.”

“You're never too late to learn, and you always need a project.”

“nothing is written, nothing is written. We write it ourselves.”

“you have to be a, a mayor as well as a chief executive, you know? You're managing a polity as well as a, as a business.”

“you've got to get outside the sort of tyranny of the moment,”

“I've also decided to give myself a new challenge, which is to, to set up a A small business, which will essentially be about providing people with the, the means to, to rewild their own private spaces, gardens, balconies, et cetera. It's, it's not, in a sense, it's not a big deal. It's, you know, I'm kind of thinking, can I get some bottom-up change by people?”

“And many universities, unfortunately, in the UK at the moment are borrowing For their everyday operations, because the, as you said, the, the financial model just doesn't, doesn't work.”

“And I, one of the things I'm really proud of that our staff achieved at the OU was in 2023, we got this gold award in the National Teaching Excellence Framework, which is a, a system in the UK that, that where universities are graded according to the quality of their teaching and student experience. And we came out in 2023 with a gold award, and I think that was a tremendous achievement given, you know, the context we were working in.”

“You have to do two apparently sort of contradictory, paradoxical things. You need to keep a whole system view of what's going on, because you are the person at the top of the institution, you can see how things interrelate … But the other thing, and this is why I say it's paradoxical, is you've got to be prepared to go into the detail when you need to. You can't say, well, you know, I'm now promoted beyond getting involved in the detail.”

“But we saw a huge growth in student numbers because a lot of students who were thinking about studying online brought that decision forward because they found themselves with more time working at home or being furloughed. But then, then those numbers fell back. So we had to staff up for it, and then we had to staff down for it.”

“I finished my full-time career, as you've said in your introduction, as vice chancellor at the Open University, which is a great honor and privilege.”

“I moved to the OU from Middlesex University, where I was vice chancellor of that, North London-based, very sort of community-orientated university, a huge amount of diversity.”

“before I went to Middlesex, I was previously at the OU as a pro vice chancellor, one of the deputy vice chancellors. I'd worked in a number of different universities in the sector, some research-intensive, some more teaching, community-orientated.”

“increasingly came to realize that actually being inside the state, being part of the public sector, and having management responsibility was where you could really get things done.”

“I went through various head of department, dean, deputy, vice chancellor roles, and then ended up vice chancellor.”

“November twenty-four, I, I was diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer, and, I stepped down because I needed to focus on my treatment. I'm in remission now.”

“While I was having my radiotherapy in Oxford, I had a part-time visiting fellowship at Oxford University, where I actually wrote the HEPI pamphlet that you've mentioned, which I'm sure we'll come on to later.”

“And I think the fact I was a cancer patient with that identity meant I got a number of things into focus about what was important in life and what was important for my grandchildren and my own legacy in some senses,”

“my seven-year-old grandson is mad about going out and hunting for bugs, you know, but we go out looking for Stag beetles in Rottingwood. We don't find any.”

“which is to, to set up a A small business, which will essentially be about providing people with the, the means to, to rewild their own private spaces, gardens, balconies, et cetera.”

“I probably would have liked to see a decade through, I think, ten years is a good, good period for a VC because the cycles are, are quite relatively slow compared to it, other areas of, of activity.”

“universities, like it or not, do have to be run as businesses, preferably as social enterprises, but, because that public service ethos is fundamental.”

“being a vice chancellor or a, or a university president is, is a bit, you know, you have to be a, a mayor as well as a chief executive, you know? You're managing a polity as well as a, as a business.”

“give me a bit of me time every couple of weeks to just have a thick space and, to make sure I've always, you know, got time for family, friends, nature,”

“Staying focused, I say the second thing, it's easy to be distracted. It's easy to go off on a tangent on something, you know, stay focused. What is it you're really trying to achieve?”

“and you've got to get outside the sort of tyranny of the moment, as somebody put it to me once, this tyranny of the moment. You've, you've got to keep a perspective.”

“Harold Wilson, who was the prime minister in the sixties at the time the OU was created, counted it as among his two greatest achievements, the other one being to keep, Britain out of the Vietnam War.”

“A little bit about it, it was the UK's largest university by student numbers. It's got around about two hundred thousand students across the UK.”

“the OU uniquely of all the universities is based in each jurisdiction, is, is regulated by them, has a, a national identity in each of the four nations of the UK.”

“So the university doesn't choose the student, the student chooses the university. We regard all applicants as grown-ups. They, they've got, they've got the power to choose. It's not, it's not for us to decide who should be educated.”

“on the university's OpenLearn website, there's a huge number of free courses, and besides that being a societal mission to provide those courses free, they are an opportunity to try before you buy.”

“no other university I've worked in puts in the research, the resources to creating a course that the OU does, and it's, it's always a team exercise, and not just academic teams, but editors, focus group facilitators, graphic designers, they're all involved,”

“and it has a unique relationship with the BBC. It, it co-produces, about thirty television and radio programs a year with the BBC,”

“we got this gold award in the National Teaching Excellence Framework, which is a, a system in the UK that, that where universities are graded according to the quality of their teaching and student experience.”

“Your approach to leadership has got to be shaped by the context you're in. So that what type of institution are you, are you in? How do you align with what it's about?”

“We transferred about 5,000 tutors who were employed sessionally and part-time onto professional terms and conditions. It sounds so small saying that.”

“one aspect was I don't think, well, I know we weren't clear enough about the benefits we were seeking to achieve. Some stakeholders saw it as, you know, just about improving terms and conditions.”

“we started off with a, because of the complexity, with a, with an adopt, not adapt mantra, we thought, we're not going to get into all this customization and so on.”

“Again, the benefits, with hindsight, were not clearly enough articulated at the beginning, and this sort of paraphrasing, but this sort of big bang approach had to be replaced by a more modular approach.”

“the university had a huge growth in student numbers during the COVID pandemic, which of course was another change I had to take the university through shortly after I was appointed in 2019.”

“But I'm very pleased that last year the university returned to surplus after a couple of years of deficit, managing that situation, planned deficits.”

“You need to keep a whole system view of what's going on, because you are the person at the top of the institution, you can see how things interrelate.”

“you've got to be prepared to go into the detail when you need to. You can't say, well, you know, I'm now promoted beyond getting involved in the detail.”

“we spent a lot of time collating all the evidence. We, we, we put together an evidence base of why this change was necessary, and we spent a lot of time taking that out to the university community saying, look, you know, here's the evidence.”

“You know, so, so we got to a stage where everybody accepted the case for change, including the union, because the evidence had been opened up and there'd been the opportunity to challenge it.”

“Well, the most important thing in all our lives is that we have a sustainable economy, you know, that our means of livelihood is secure, as secure as it can be.”

“So I argue in the pamphlet that this is the most important mission for higher education is its contribution to the sustainable economy.”

“But to look at the curriculum and say, well, you know, what's the carbon footprint of our graduates? You know, are they really going to make a difference with the skills and knowledge they've got?”

“We borrow to consume rather than just borrow to invest. We should not be borrowing to consume. And many universities, unfortunately, in the UK at the moment are borrowing For their everyday operations,”

“You know, part of it is because we haven't been honest about the cost of change. I think, for example, governments, including the UK government, can underestimate the cost of the carbon transition.”

“It's that we are producing too many people with the wrong kind of qualification taken at the wrong point in their lives.”

“And another controversial argument I'm making in my pamphlet is we need directive government. Universities will not do this themselves.”

“You know, do you really need three, four years of full-time study to get your initial qualification, whether that's as a historian or, you know, as a psychotherapist or, you know, whether you're in a professional field or, or an academic field?”

“There have been some universities who have in the UK moved to sort of 50 year stretches, which I think is a great thing.”

“We need to consume less of higher education as we consume it at the moment, but we need to consume more of higher education that is about shorter courses. That is about taking those courses over a working lifetime and beyond.”

“We need to re-engineer that first experience with a shorter course, and then the students can either top that up as they progress through their working careers and their lifetimes, or reskill and change direction out of their own choice or because of changes in the economy.”

“I mean, it, there's been Policy papers on this promising a change of direction since the 1970s in the UK, but it's never happened.”

“There is no code for academic knowledge. There's nothing that says this is knowledge that needs special attention, that, that you can particularly rely on because it's been produced Through a, a code that is committed to respect for evidence, openness to criticism, clarity, precision.”

“Well, at the moment, frankly, academia is just one of these knowledge bubbles, but no, no. Academic knowledge should have a special status, but then we need to demonstrate why that's the case.”