Earlier this week, The Open University’s Vice Chancellor, Tim Blackman, announced the OU Council’s decision to introduce a “four-year financial approach to adjust [The OU’s] income and expenditure and return to a surplus budget by 2025” (full story). In doing so, the University intends to find savings from across their annual budget of about 16%.
The reason for this is that there is an increasing gap between the University’s income and its expenditure, which could cause a risk to the sustainability of the OU in the longer-term if left unaddressed.
As your elected student representatives, we want to reassure you that both your President and Deputy President were involved in this discussion at Council, and were in agreement with the decision that was taken in order to protect the future of the OU.
There are no immediate consequences arising from this decision that students need to be aware of. However, we will continue to monitor the implementation of plans to reduce expenditure or raise additional revenue to ensure that the interests of students are considered in any decisions that are made.
In particular, we will continue to raise the importance of protecting the student experience, with an emphasis on the quality and affordability of tuition, as well as the need to maintain efforts around access, participation and success (APS).
We will keep you updated with any significant developments, as and when they occur.
Margaret Greenaway – President
Gareth Jones – Deputy President