Historian urges Oxford to offer online undergrad courses
According to the author of Oxford University’s official history, the university must “embrace online learning”, and finalise plans to raise billions of pounds to go private, or face an “uncomfortable future.” The book, which was launched earlier this week, warns that new technologies such as online courses could make traditional universities redundant, and that it is a case of when, not if, virtual learning transforms tertiary education. The author recommends that Oxford should start offering undergraduate degrees online, to resolve the ongoing controversy around student access to elite institutions. On the subject of going private, the book warns it would be expensive (replacing current levels of research council funding alone would require an endowment of £8bn), however, it would free the university from government demands.

Oxford, along with all other universities, faces an “uncomfortable future” unless it embraces online degrees and draws up plans for raising billions of pounds to go private, according to the university’s new official history. The book, to be launched by Oxford University Press this week, says new technology has the potential to make universities such as Oxford “redundant” and that it is “only a matter of time” before virtual learning transforms higher education.

Laurence Brockliss, the historian and author, argues that Oxford itself should offer undergraduate degrees via online learning, and in doing so could solve the controversies it faces over student access. “I would like Oxford to pilot something, and say we are going to offer 1,000 18-year-olds online courses in different subjects, to experiment and see how it works and how it can be improved,” Brockliss said.

Offering online degrees could help Oxford to recruit students from backgrounds that it currently struggles to reach and allow it to forge better links with the general public, according to Brockliss, a professor of history at Magdalen College. “I don’t think we’re as good as we used to be at connecting with the public. We don’t have many academics who occupy the same kind of space that Sir Isaiah Berlin or AJP Taylor did in the past – people who were known among the population because they appeared regularly on radio and television and were able to bridge this gap,” Brockliss said. “The outside world still thinks Oxford or Cambridge are not really places for ordinary people at all – and that’s both sad and untrue.”

In his book The University of Oxford – A History, Brockliss writes that Oxford faces two alternatives: “It can stand aside and let the world of higher education be reshaped around it, or it can take the lead and potentially enjoy a future where its influence is even greater than it is at present – and where the carping about the social profile of its graduates would be finally laid to rest.”

Brockliss said: “I don’t think it’s a serious threat at the moment, but I could envisage 10 or 15 years down the road one of the newer universities developing online undergraduate degrees in a serious and creative way.

“If that were to happen and if employers – and employers would determine the success or failure of this – were to feel that the quality of the education was as good as residential universities were giving, then that kind of initiative would really take off.”

The historian says Oxford is vulnerable to shifts in government funding, concluding that “it is hard to see how the university can continue to benefit as handsomely” if pressure mounts to distribute funds more evenly, making it difficult to remain among the top 10 universities in the world.

“This may be the moment for Oxford to revisit the possibility of becoming a private university,” Brockliss writes, arguing that government finances strained by the NHS are unlikely to support higher spending for universities.

“What I would like to see Oxford doing is planning the possibility so that the pitfalls and potential have been properly argued through,” he said. “If the pressures from outside became such that it was felt it would be a useful option to go private, then we would have done all the work beforehand and know what we were letting ourselves in for.”

Replacing current levels of research council funding alone would require an endowment of £8bn, but Brockliss argues that Oxford already has fundraising for £3bn, and that more could be raised if the advantages of independence were “carefully and plausibly explained” to supporters.

The advantages, according to Brockliss, include freedom from government demands. In recent months Oxford has been criticised by David Cameron, among others, for its poor record in admitting ethnic minorities and students from state schools.

“I don’t think we can ever win on this one. No matter how many people we can find, there will always be other people we haven’t taken,” Brockliss said. “We’ve moved a long way, but it’s very difficult recruiting from within the UK properly qualified undergraduates from the social and educational backgrounds that the state would like us to take people from. Either we decide to alter our admissions criteria – which there doesn’t seem to be much support for – or I think we will never satisfy the state on this one.”

But going private would certainly change Oxford. “Once you cut yourself off from the government then the possibility of your university just becoming a kind of ‘world university’ that has no specific national base would become a real probability.

“You can begin to see this happening in some of the American universities, where their intake even at undergraduate level is now so international that the fact they are in America doesn’t really matter, they can be anywhere.”

Among the more colourful asides in the history is the Rolling Stones’ unwilling performance at an Oxford student ball. The band had been booked to appear before making their breakthrough into the big time in 1964, but the ball organisers were unmoved: “The Stones were held to their contract and had to break off their successful first tour of the US to perform for a fee which did not cover their travel expenses.”