11 January: The Open University

On this date in 1973 The Open University awarded its first degrees.

1. The Open University (OU) was founded by the Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1969.
2. The OU’s motto is “Learn and Live”.
3. The OU is one of a handful of universities to have won University Challenge twice, in 1985 and 1999, and is in joint third position in the all-time points list.
4. The OU is the largest academic institute in the UK, in terms of student numbers. It has more than 200,000 students and nearly 6,400 tutors. They offer 408 undergraduate modules and 162 postgraduate modules.
5. Who are all these students? According to the OU website, about 34% of new OU undergraduates are under 25. Some 36,400 students with disabilities were studying with the OU in 2020/21. 77% of OU undergraduates had no previous HE qualifications on entry. 70% of OU students work full or part-time during their studies and 26% of OU UK undergraduates live in the 25% most deprived areas. The average age of an OU undergraduate is 29. Just 9% of OU students are over 50.
6. An OU degree makes a candidate more attractive to employers, because as well as proving that they know their stuff, it proves they can manage their time, are up for a challenge and will see things through to the end.
7. The OU is the largest provider of law graduates in the UK.
8. Famous people who have studied with the OU include Gordon Brown, Chris Whitty, Lenny Henry, Myleene Klass, Jerry Hall and Holly Willoughby. A number of big names have been granted honorary doctorates, too. They include Richard Dawkins, Terry Pratchett, Tim Berners-Lee, Brian Cox and David Attenborough. Characters in fiction study with the OU, too. Julie Walters’ character in Educating Rita, Anne Bryce in the BBC sit-com Ever Decreasing Circles, Yvonne Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart, Sheila Grant in Brookside and Dorian Green from Birds of a Feather.
9. You might remember OU programmes being broadcast on the BBC between January 1971 and 15 December 2006. These, too, found their way into fiction. In Keeping up Appearances, Onslow watches Open University on TV on occasion, and in Life on Mars, Sam Tyler receives messages from the real world via Open University programmes late at night. Nowadays the OU makes more use of the Internet and DVDs. Some courses have an in person teaching element, and many have summer schools lasting a week.
10. In its inaugural year, there was a postal strike that lasted seven weeks, not good news for people trying to study for a degree by distance learning. The OU solved the problem by getting its own postal van for coursework deliveries.

Character birthday

January: Member of a team of villains known as the Calendar Mob. Little is known about him except that he has the power to create snow and freeze people in ice.