Open University vice-chancellor Tim Blackman to retire next year

The UK’s Open University is looking for a new vice-chancellor, with incumbent Tim Blackman due to retire next year.

Professor Blackman joined the OU in 2019 and his five-year term was due to expire this October, but he has agreed to postpone his retirement until May 2025. The OU is now advertising for his successor.

Professor Blackman, the former vice-chancellor of Middlesex University, previously served as pro vice-chancellor for research and quality at the OU, as well as acting vice-chancellor.

He will be credited with stabilising the institution after the tumultuous tenure of former BBC executive Peter Horrocks and steering the institution through the Covid-19 pandemic, when the widespread shift to the distance learning model long practiced by the OU allowed it to significantly increase the size of its student cohort, recording an 18.8 per cent increase in total headcount in 2020-21.

Professor Blackman also announced plans for the OU to move from Walton Hall on the outskirts of Milton Keynes, its home since 1969, to a new campus in the centre of the city, in a move that will see it offer its courses taught in person as well as online.

He struck a deal to guarantee permanent contracts for the OU’s 4,000 associate lecturers, delivering them a substantial pay rise.

And the OU enjoyed a significant measure of financial stability on his watch after years of turmoil, posting consecutive operating surpluses, excluding exceptional costs such as pension adjustments, between 2018-19 and 2021-22.

However, financial issues are again challenging the institution, which reported a £25.1 million deficit for 2022-23 after falling short of student recruitment targets. Last year the institution’s cohort shrank by 9,392 – or 5.9 per cent – to 150,619, although this is still comfortably above pre-Covid levels.

And Professor Blackman was forced to make an apology to Jo Phoenix, a former professor of criminology at the OU, after an employment tribunal found that she had been forced to quit because of the “hostile environment” that confronted her gender-critical views. The tribunal ruled that the OU had failed to protect Professor Phoenix and Professor Blackman ordered an independent review of the institution’s working environment in response to the judgment.

He was criticised in the tribunal ruling for, while Professor Phoenix faced a “targeted campaign” and a “pile-on” from colleagues, issuing a statement that only referred specifically to “hurt and a feeling of being abandoned among our trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming staff” and did not mention the distress felt by Professor Phoenix. The tribunal ruled that nothing in the statement “looked like the action that [Professor Phoenix] had requested” to stop the attacks on her.

Malcolm Sweeting, the OU’s pro-chancellor, paid tribute to Professor Blackman, a professor of sociology and social policy who has also held senior roles at Durham, Oxford Brookes and Teesside universities.

“Having taken up the mantle of vice-chancellor in October 2019, just months before the start of a global pandemic, it’s fair to say that Tim’s term of office has been eventful. It’s in this context that I’d like to recognise his significant contribution over the last four-and-a-half years, and to express my sincere gratitude,” Mr Sweeting said.

Mr Sweeting said that Professor Blackman’s successor would have a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to “help us co-create an inspiring vision for the future as a world-class institution, driving forward our mission to be open to all through an exciting and diverse portfolio at the leading edge of learning and educational technologies that engage students and deliver success”.

Professor Blackman’s announcement comes just days after the UK’s longest-serving vice-chancellor, John Cater, who has led what is now Edge Hill University since 1993, said that he too would retire next year.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com