The Open University of the United Kingdom – a British eccentricity or a model for the world?

In the final paragraph of his Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson, an American, paid tribute to the best things about Britain: ‘What other nation in the world could have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners’ Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None of course’ (Bryson, 1996, p. 352).