Tony Coughlan, who has been with the OU for 13 years, outside the Bristol regional centre, one of seven threatened with closure. Photograph: Sam Frost/The Guardian

‘This change will be the end of the Open University as we know it’

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Staff are balloting for strike action as OU plans to close seven of nine regional centres in England amid competition from free online courses such as Moocs

When the Open University announced last month that it would be closing seven of its nine regional centres in England, it said it was a response to the changing demands of students, rather than funding.

“The way in which we support our students has changed significantly,” says Keith Zimmerman, the university secretary. “It is now almost entirely online. Very few of our students come into our offices.” He says that by selling off university buildings and concentrating on just three offices in England and another four in the rest of Britain and Ireland, the OU will be able to release money to spend on responding to student queries more quickly and outside traditional working hours.

It’s time to lobby against the collapse in part-time student numbers

But staff say abandoning many of the opportunities for face-to-face contact and support will change the OU’s ethos. The University and College Union (UCU) is balloting for strike action over the closures after a university senate meeting last week voted in favour of rejecting the plans as “high risk” and “failing adequately to support the academic mission of the university”. The university has nevertheless decided to continue with its proposals, due to come into force by February 2017, and its council will make a final decision in November.

Philip O’Sullivan, lecturer in the faculty of social sciences at the OU and a UCU representative, says: “This is the most fundamental change in the way the university operates in England since the creation of the OU over 45 years ago, and tutors and academic colleagues have said to me this will be the end of the OU in England as we know it.” He says student support staff and academics work at the university because the OU transforms people’s lives. “They give everything to it and are seeing all the values and ethos of the institution being torn apart.” He believes financial cuts are at least part of the reason for the closures.

The university stands to save £5m out of a total budget of more than £400m by closing the centres. It has been hard hit by the dramatic decline in numbers of part-time students after changes to higher education funding, including the introduction of £9,000 tuition fees. The institution, which has almost 200,000 students, has the largest concentration of part-time students of any UK university, and student numbers fell by about 10% between 2011-12 and 2013-14. At the same time, an £18.8m surplus turned into a £16.9m deficit.

But, as a leader in distance learning, the university is also vulnerable to the seismic changes brought about by technology. “The OU is struggling to find its place in a world that has moved on,” says Mike Boxall, higher education expert at PA Consulting Group. “Most universities now have substantial online offerings, especially in business and areas like that. [The OU] haven’t got the field to themselves in the way they had.”

Quantum mechanics lecture televised in 1982. — The way it was: a quantum mechanics lecture televised in 1982.

Three years ago, Clay Shirky, associate professor at New York University and commentator on internet technologies, predicted a revolution in higher education brought about by massive open online courses (Moocs), which are free to anyone in the world with access to a computer. He compared their likely effect to that of Spotify on the music industry, predicting they would cause some traditional institutions to fail while opportunities would emerge for people ill-served or shut out of the current system. The former universities minister David Willetts also saw them as a way to widen access to UK university education, particularly for students from abroad.

Most universities have embraced Moocs enthusiastically, including the OU. It said last year’s deficit was in part the result of the need to invest in “strategic projects”, and one of the most expensive of these – costing about £10m – was FutureLearn, a Mooc platform it owns as a commercial subsidiary and develops in partnership with 72 academic institutions and specialist organisations.

This month – its second anniversary – FutureLearn celebrated its five millionth enrolment, with about 2.5 million people signed up (many sign up for more than one course).

Moocs, and the man leading the UK's charge

“We are just scratching the surface of what we can do,” says Simon Nelson, FutureLearn’s CEO, who is particularly proud of its achievements in social learning: about 40% of people taking a FutureLearn course engage in its social environment, such as writing on forums and contributing content. “We are trying to create a community of learners who don’t only engage with content but engage with each other, as well as with teachers and those who facilitate their learning.”

But other online experts say that although they are excited about the possibilities offered by Moocs, they recognise their limitations, particularly when it comes to engagement.

“The great difficulty with Moocs is that by far the largest proportion of people who take them are highly qualified professionals,” says Diana Laurillard, professor of learning with digital technologies at the Institute of Education. “The kind of learning they deliver isn’t well designed for people who want to try out university. At that stage of your learning you need a lot of scaffolding and hand-holding and feedback on what you are doing.”

Sarah Speight, professor of higher education and academic director of online learning at the University of Nottingham, says elite universities originally viewed Moocs as a way of widening participation, but there has been little evidence of them achieving that. She argues institutions have moved beyond the stage of altruism and are seeking to use Moocs for continuing professional development and bite-size professional learning. “Widening access was always a bit pie in the sky.”

Nelson says 70% of those taking courses with FutureLearn already have a degree, or higher, but says students also include sixth formers and retired people studying arts subjects. However, many businesses and non-governmental organisations are recognising the opportunities Moocs offer for staff training.

OU students are now more likely to be studying for career reasons, and to be in work – but they are also more likely to come without previous higher education experience. This is one reason, Zimmerman says, for the decision to close the regional centres. He argues that these students want more online access to support, especially as they are getting younger – the average age of OU students has dropped from 38 to 28 in less than 15 years.

But those who oppose the closures argue that these students need even more support on the ground than their predecessors. Tony Coughlan, a tutor at the OU’s Bristol office, says that while you can now find a textbook online on virtually any subject, and Moocs offer endless opportunities for learning, “what you don’t get is a person who can personalise the learning experience.

“That’s what the regions have done. People new to social learning get carried away and forget that,” he says.

‘Our students won’t feel connected’

Over my time here our teaching has got better because we are able to use e-resources, ebooks, e-journals, and in our face-to-face and community sessions we can concentrate on things that really benefit from discussion and exploration with the students, writes OU lecturer Tony Coughlan.

We no longer have to photocopy extracts from books and journals and distribute them. The photocopier used to be really busy in the runup to a tutorial. In the past we would still have had online forums but they were more administrative, more about handing-in dates for essays and arrangements for face-to-face meetings, and lift-sharing.

A lot of students now are in different Facebook groups. We see people working out their ideas, discussing topical things and how to incorporate them in assignments, although there are still lift-sharing stuff and pictures of kittens and photos of the work stations they’ve set up in their bedrooms.

But it really only works when they have met face to face. It’s very hard to create a sense of community from scratch online. All the evidence shows you meet face to face, then you can continue your relationship online.

I remember when you turned up to one of our study centres on a Saturday and there were hundreds of students all clutching their bags. There was an excitement and sense of being part of a learning community. It was thrilling and really motivating. You don’t get that so much online. There is a sense when you are part of a community that you aren’t alone. If you are feeling a bit wobbly and thinking of throwing in the towel, you see lots of other people in the same position and it helps you carry on.

That’s the bit the university seems to want to do away with now. Those of us familiar with the role we play are worried that without that, students won’t feel connected to the university and to one another, which is really important.