The Open University, one of the great successes of modern Britain, is facing a crisis. On the surface, this centres on the embattled vice-chancellor, Peter Horrocks, whom the staff want to resign. The UCU branch at the university has passed a motion of no confidence in him, and says he no longer commands the respect of staff. The immediate cause was a remark for which he has been forced to apologise, to the effect that some academics had been allowed “to get away with not teaching for decades”, but this came in a context of brutal budget cuts he has proposed. The Open University runs on idealism and voluntary effort more than most institutions do. If the leader cannot harness those qualities, he has failed and should go. More profoundly, the crisis exposes a huge disagreement about what actually constitutes teaching, and why it is a worthwhile activity. Is it a way to produce exam results and certificates of employability, or is the purpose to share whatever makes a subject worth studying for itself, and to inculcate the skills that will enable students to glimpse and pursue that vision?

But the deeper crisis reaches far beyond the vice-chancellor’s inadequacies. It will not be solved if he goes only to be replaced by another figure spouting “management Horrocks”. Some of the challenges facing the university are simply a result of the huge changes in society and technology since it was founded in 1969. In the early days, staff agonised over whether to include colour in their television programmes, since many viewers might still own black and white sets. In those days, too, there was a very large pool of middle-aged people who had been denied tertiary education, and for whom this really was the university of the second chance. But the pool of second chancers has now largely gone the way of black and white televisions.

Those are difficulties that would face the university under any administration. So would the widespread competition in the field of distance learning. But with all that said, it is central government that is largely responsible for the difficulties of the OU. The government’s conception of higher education as a marketplace where students can shop for qualifications is profoundly destructive to all universities, and the OU is only the most exposed and vulnerable. The introduction, and then the tripling, of tuition fees has wrecked its financial model, so that student numbers have dropped by a third since 2010. The only thing to fall as fast has been the university’s rating for student satisfaction, from 1st to 47th. So much for the conception of universities as selling to “customers”, rather than teaching students.

The university is an institution that enriches the lives of those who attend it. It is on that basis that the government should still recognise, and support, the ideal that everyone deserves access to the benefits of a real university, whatever their past, and whenever they decide they need it.