Interview - Emma Rose

MBA student testimonial

Video of an interview with Emma Rose at the 2012 Student of the year awards. She was highly commended for the Award of Outstanding Contribution to Society.

(Edited transcript of the interview)

A little bit about me. I'm 40 years old now and I left school when I was 15, wasn't able to go into any kind of further or higher education, and The Open University was the route in to being able to study. Everyone can come and everyone has the chance to be proven capable, everyone has the chance to be proven knowledgeable and to be a part of something, and if I think of myself of one of literally tens of thousands of students across the world, I get incredibly excited and motivated by that and there's nothing else that can compare, really. There was no other contender, to be honest, and the reason why I wanted to do the MBA was because I didn't quite understand why people were making the decisions they were making in the workplace, and I couldn't... I just I thought that they knew something that I didn't know and that they went behind a closed door and were told things that we wouldn't understand. So I genuinely, genuinely wanted to be able to understand what managers knew because I didn't get why they were doing what they were doing, and unfortunately it kind of was a little bit counterproductive because when I came to The Open University and they gave me the frameworks and the knowledge and the vocabulary and the confidence, actually made me even worse as an employee because I knew that they were doing something wrong because I'd learned that, not just having it in my gut, and so it was an incredibly enriching experience for me, but actually, invariably it's the crux point to changing my life in a completely different direction from the minute I stepped into the university.

What difference have your studies made to your daily work?

The difference my studies have made to my daily work? I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now, not in any stretch. Everything that I do now is in some way related to my MBA. The very first job that I got in management was because I had a diploma as I was on a learning journey. That was the Northamptonshire Probation, and I went in as the first unit manager who wasn't a probation officer managing frontline service delivery, and I got that job because I had a diploma with The Open University. I've got jobs in the past where it's a requirement to have a master's degree, and yes, I can tick that box, but more importantly now as an ambassador for the UK and Europe, I got that because I had the confidence to go out and stand in front of people because the MBA made me feel that I had the knowledge, I had the right, and that's then transformed into other people finding the work that I do valuable, the knowledge that I've got to give useful, and therefore I can get involved and I can help.

An Open University qualification is often referred to as distance learning. Is it really distant? What was your experience?

It's not for me because it's right in front of my face, it's in my life, it's everywhere I look. I look on my bookshelves at home and the books are there. Two days ago I was having tea with a lecturer from my strategy course. I've had much more flexibility, I've been able to take a year out, I've been able to bring my daughter up, I've been able to deal with a change in career part way through that wouldn't have been afforded in an orthodox route through higher education. I love the concept of knowledge and just really human potential, and The Open University has really embodied that for me, so it's very, very close to my heart for a start, but also with a triple accreditation of the Masters of Business Administration, that and just the way that the rigour and the actual content and the elective choice that you get, it's obvious to me that The Open University is one of the best degrees that you can actually get. So, yeah, would I recommend Open University? Absolutely.

Emma Rose receiving her Outstanding Contribution to Society Highly Commended Award from Professor Rebecca Taylor.