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Tony Pritchard

Anthony Langley Pritchard was a teacher and university administrator. He was the foundation Chief Executive Officer of Open Learning Australia (now Open Universities Australia).

Pritchard was born in Melbourne, Australia and moved with his family to country Victoria from where he was sent to boarding school (Melbourne Grammar School). He completed science and education degrees at the universities of Melbourne and Queensland and taught science and mathematics in government and independent secondary schools in Victoria and Tasmania.

From 1969 to 1975 he taught in a Papua New Guinea government high school (Kwikila High School) before taking up a lectureship at the Goroka Teachers’ College (now the University of Goroka). From Goroka he was invited to join the staff of the Institute of Technology in Lae, where from a senior administrative position, he assisted the Director and later Vice-Chancellor (Professor John Sandover) develop the institution for university status as the Papua New Guineas University of Technology.

In 1975 he was appointed as the Executive Officer of the Interim Council of Victoria’s fourth university, Deakin University, arriving some months ahead of the foundation Vice Chancellor, Professor Fred Jevons. During the next ten years Pritchard became University Secretary and Registrar as the university grew and became a leader in open and distance education.

In 1985 he was appointed as Registrar of Monash University responsible for the University’s academic and personnel administration, the university’s international program and the Open Learning Program. His actions in promoting a relationship with Malaysia’s Sunway College in 1988 lead to the establishment of Monash’s first international campus in 1998, Monash University Sunway.

As part of the Vice-Chancellor’s Executive (Professor Mal Logan), he played a central role in the mergers undertaken by Monash with the Chisholm Institute of Technology and the Gippsland College of Advanced Education (GIAE). The relationship with GIAE was crucial in Monash becoming one of the eight national centres for distance learning, and subsequently obtaining major Australian government grants to develop internationally recognised programs in open and distance learning. Pritchard was successively director of the Television Open Learning Project and later, Open Learning Australia, first established as a company of Monash University and later, as a company with seven other university shareholders.

In 1992/3 Pritchard was seconded to Open Learning Australia (OLA) becoming first Managing Director and later Chief Executive Office. A formal review of Open Learning Australia was conducted by the Centre for the Studies of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne, amongst whose comments included the following: OLA “should continue” and much credit was due to all concerned, who “despite difficulties inherent in the early stages of any major initiative, have shown an overriding commitment to the goal of widened access to quality tertiary education and the development of effective ways in which to achieve it”. (2)

Open Learning Australia was established to implement the Australian Government’s Open Learning Initiative with grants of $35 million. As an organisationally and technologically innovative alternative to campus based university studies it makes tertiary education available to those unable to benefit from more conventional forms, building upon established distance education practices. Now as Open Universities Australia its main delivery method is through Internet-based studies and online learning.

In 1999 Pritchard resigned from OLA to head his own education consulting company (see Anthony Pritchard).

(1) Open Learning Australia: an overview by A.L.Pritchard, ACU Bulletin of Current Documentation, Number 121, December 1995 (2) Centre for the Study of Higher Education, the University of Melbourne.