A child of change: The establishment of the Open Foundation Programme in 1974

In 1974 the University of Newcastle, Australia, established a mature age access programme called the Open Foundation. Since that time, thousands of adults have entered university through the Open Foundation portal. This article explores the layers of context for the establishment of the Open Foundation in the early 1970s. It seeks to understand the reasons why the University of Newcastle, which already provided the means for direct entry for some adults, sought to widen participation for adults at that time by creating a year long pre‐tertiary programme. Pascoe’s explanation that matureage entry schemes in Australian universities were prompted by ‘pragmatic considerations’ such as the disruption to intakes due to the lengthening of secondary schooling in New South Wales in 1969 and the falling demand for university places in the late 1970s and 1980s, does not satisfactorily account for the establishment of the Open Foundation Programme. Rather this article argues that the Open Foundation was set up in response to a variety of international, national and local influences, and as a reflection of educational ideas that were flowing from overseas at the time, especially around the establishment of the Open University in the United Kingdom, and in which not only pragmatism, but also idealism figured.