Before the UOC, only one Catalonian distance education initiative had been noted. In the 1930’s the Mancomunitat de Catalunya, a vocational correspondence education programme, was setup by the Extensio Tecnica Professional. UOC was founded in the context of a re-emergence of the political and economic autonomy of Catalunya. In 1994 Jordi Pujol, Catalunya’s long term president (1980 - 2003), initiated the project to found a Catalonian distance university after the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) denied the self-organisation of its Catalonian professors and thus effectively prevented the autonomy of Catalonian’s higher distance education from its central campus in Madrid (UOC faculty 1). Naturally, Pujol consulted with Gabriel Ferraté (see UPC and UOC leadership for more detailed information), who had tremendous experience in higher education politics, and the two collaborated effectively to give genesis to what would become one of the most successful distance universities. The decision to base the university’s pedagogy on internet based communication was a strategic, but also very opportunistic [i] one (UOC faculty 2). Given Ferraté’s background as an engineer, he was not afraid of technology. Since his vision for the new university was an entrepreneurial and efficiency driven one (De Jonghe & Van Poeck, 2005), it was based on the idea of exploiting IT based opportunities for automation and the acceleration of communication. Consequently, the institution was designed as a semi-private entity outside the established university system in order to ensure the possibility for strong leadership with the objective of responsiveness to the rapid societal development. Hence, we witness a new organization; the Fundacio per a LA Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (FUOC) – a consortium of local government representatives and key leaders from instrumental Catalonian companies. This consortium was founded in 1994 as a ‘holding’ for the higher education enterprise.

Following his vision, Ferraté contracted the manager (who a role akin to that of a CEO) and the first bootstrapping management team [ii] from his personal network and they immediately started to implement his revolutionary plan.

The fact that UOC started to admit its first two hundred students already in the following academic year 1995-1996 indicates that Ferraté did effectively create the non-bureaucratic university he had in mind. (See the business model for an analysis of the economic- and organisational-aspects, as well as the e-learning platforms for the pedagogical and technological aspects of the UOC model).

Professors remember how in these early days of the web and of IT in Spain, students had to be taught how to use a mouse and the whole setup was highly experimental from the technological point of view. And a successful experiment it was indeed. In the following year 1500 students had already matriculated. It was thus that the first version of the virtual campus that did not require special client software was introduced. In these very early days, the pioneering atmosphere of the web was ubiquitous- but was coupled with a feeling of taming a technological monster that bucked forward in surging complexity.

In 2000 UOC’s biggest strategic (joint-) venture was formed with one of the central Spanish media companies in order to enter into the Latin American market. The joint project lasted until 2004, when UOC bought up all shares of the joint venture and now maintains internationalisation activities on its own. Today, there is one established UOC subsidiary in Mexico, which is developing organically, but which faces competition from Mexico’s national distance education provider. Additionally, UOC has strategic outposts in Beijing and Brussels.
In early 2006, after a political power shift in Catalunya’s government, Dr. Ferraté , who had created and lead the UOC for 11 years, was ousted form his own university. Dr. Ferraté , who at that point was 74 years old, did not leave under harmonious terms, but to a certain degree he did not leave the institution another choice. There was, and still is, no defined term length for the rector; Instead, the council appoints and re-elects the rector on a consensual basis.

A new era began at UOC, when in late 2005 Imma Tubella took office as the institution’s second rector. Prof. Tubella, who knows the university well through her long engagement as professor and researcher, has set out to turn UOC into a ‘great university’ (UOC, 2006), which she seems to contrast to the business logic driven institutional mindset promoted before. Naturally, she has replaced almost the whole management team, as well as partially restructured the organisational architecture. Nevertheless, while subtle changes in the collective mindset are observable, up till now (2007), the new management has not publicly presented their elaborated strategy. Nevertheless, several projects representing the new, more academic line have been initiated. For example, all UOC faculty is urged to obtain doctorate degrees, and research has been given a more central role than under the old leadership. It is still too early to sincerely evaluate the changes thus initiated, but it can be said that UOC is still a very young institution, and one that has accomplished much in its short history.

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[i] Opportunistic is used here positively, as in taking advantage of an opportunity.

[ii] Instead of an academic leadership team as in a traditional university (ibid. p.8)

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