HARROGATE DEGREE CEREMONY
8 April 2000
Vice-Chancellor's Address to the Graduates
Your Worships, Graduates, Guests, Colleagues, My Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I begin by bringing you greetings from our Chancellor, Betty Boothroyd. We are greatly privileged to have Madam Speaker as our Chancellor and I know that, as a native of Yorkshire, she would particularly have liked to have been here with us today. However, we all know that this is a busy time in Parliament and also a period of considerable constitutional change.
Over the past year, as we have watched the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly take their first tentative steps, we have all been reassured to know that the Mother of Parliaments at Westminster could rely on our Chancellor’s firm and experienced guidance in its own debates. She sends her congratulations to the graduates and her greetings to all of you.
Fraser Woodburn and I have found it inspiring to talk to the graduates individually. You said that an OU degree is hard work but most of you have enjoyed it. That encourages me to give you a final test today. It's like a CMA - that's a Computer Marked Assignment – but I will provide the answers even faster than the computer.
Each question is a short quotation. You have to identify the source.
If you are ready for number 1 the quotation is:
“I yield to no one in my admiration for Open University students. It seems a great deal more difficult to do an OU degree than to be feather bedded through university like most students are.”
Who do you think said that?
1. Jeremy Paxman
2. Margaret Thatcher
3. Cherie Booth
4. Ken Livingstone
In fact it was Jeremy Paxman. Last year, when the OU won his TV quiz game, University Challenge, he complained that OU students were really too good to compete against students from ordinary universities like Leeds and Cambridge. Take that as a compliment.
Let’s move on to question 2. The quote is:
“The extraordinary role of the Open University degrees in furthering the peace process in Northern Ireland is acknowledged throughout the Republican sector as well as by the smaller Loyalist political parties whose support for the Good Friday agreement of 1998 and for the 1999 Northern Ireland Executive is vital”
Where did that quote come from?
1. The Irish Times
2. The Times Higher Educational Supplement
3. Senator Mitchell
4. Mo Mowlem
It’s from an article by Anne MacHardy in the Times Higher Educational Supplement earlier this year. Over the period of the Troubles hundreds of Republican and Loyalist prisoners have studied with the OU in the Maze and other prisons. You should be proud of the way that your university has broadened their horizons and led them to seek peaceful routes towards a settlement.
This year there are over 7,000 OU students in the island of Ireland, slightly more than half of them in the Republic. The OU in Ireland operates in an integrated way in North and South and that too is a contribution to understanding and peace that will continue as politicians attempt to break the current impasse.
On to quote number 3. It reads:
“Today, we’re pushing out the boundaries of technology as the OU, excellent institution that it is, has been doing all along”
Who might have said that?
1. Bill Gates
2. Richard Branson
3. Tim Berners-Lee
4. Martha Lane Fox
This was Tim Berners-Lee, who was inventor of the World Wide Web, speaking last week. The event was the OU’s first degree ceremony of the new millennium at which he received an honorary doctorate. That ceremony was also the world’s first virtual degree ceremony. Just like today my OU colleagues and I were on a stage in our academic dress – but quite unlike today the hall was almost empty because the participants were scattered all over the globe. Tim Berners-Lee, the honorary graduate, was in a studio at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The graduates and their guests were linked up to the web from their homes around the world. It was the inaugural e-ceremony of the leading e-university and it was an exhilarating experience.
And may I note here, with much regret, that the honorary graduate we had intended to welcome to today’s ceremony was prevented by illness from being with us.
On to my final question in this short quiz. The quote is:
“The Open University has been marvellously successful in showing how open access can be squared with top-class achievement”
That quote comes from a university researcher. At which university?
1. The OU
2. Edinburgh
3. Bradford
4. Liverpool
It’s the Liverpool University Centre for Education and Employment Research. OU degrees are highly esteemed – which is why 41,000 employers sponsor their staff to study with the OU.
That’s the end of my little quiz. Do not worry if you didn’t score very well. Praise for the OU and its students comes from many sources, including some that you wouldn’t expect.
But I do congratulate you all on your success in the much stiffer test of completing an OU degree. It is good to celebrate that success this afternoon in the presence of many of the OU’s Yorkshire staff who have helped you.
My last quote talked about the combination of open access and top-class achievement. Within the OU Yorkshire is a stellar performer on both counts. A considerable proportion of our new undergraduate students in Yorkshire do not have the standard educational qualifications required for university entry yet the proportion of them who gain a credit is high. Furthermore Yorkshire leads the whole of the OU in retaining continuing students through their courses. That is a tribute to the determination and drive of Yorkshire people and also to the work of Dr Peter Smith and his staff.
The staff are always seeking ways to improve their service to students. They now open the Leeds Regional Centre on some Saturday mornings and over 600 people took advantage of that opportunity last year. We are extending the number of daytime tutorials and locating some of them in libraries.
Colleagues from Yorkshire also play an important role in OU at the national level. For example, our two largest level 1 courses, each of which has over 10,000 students this year, are both being led from here. Dr Kath Woodward is the chair of DD100 Understanding Social Change, and Ms Ley Robinson plays that role for T171 You, Your Computer and the Net.
The OU in Yorkshire is also engaged in a whole range of local projects. We value our developing links with the Regional Development Agency and Yorkshire Forward and we are encouraged to see that the Yorkshire and Humberside Universities Association is gaining momentum. We are pleased to be involved in the project for a Virtual Business School which part of Yorkshire’s economic strategy. Given the OU’s mission of openness to people we place special importance on projects that address the agenda of social inclusion. The various prizes that various bodies in Yorkshire sponsor annually for OU students are deeply appreciated – both by the recipients and by the University.
The core function of our local OU team, under the leadership of Dr Peter Smith, is to help all of our students and to support our dedicated associate lecturers. They are sincerely committed to the OU’s mission and I know that for some of today’s graduates their support was crucial.
I know that the graduates feel indebted to the many OU people who have supported them, especially when they were discouraged. Let's show our appreciation for their work.
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I expect there are other people to whom you also feel grateful. It is wonderful that so many of your family members, relatives and friends are here today.
Success in the Open University depends on the tolerance and support of others. Everyone here is aware of the impact of OU study on family and social life. No doubt you are now helping your graduate rediscover real life.
Help is now at hand for redecorating the house, taming the garden and going shopping! Extra family outings may now be feasible. But before you daydream about the new possibilities I ask the graduates to show their appreciation to you.
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If you have enjoyed your OU studies I urge you to keep in touch with your University. I encourage you to join the Association of Open University Graduates and I remind you that you are automatically members of the Alumni Association - The OU LINK.
You can find out more through Open Eye - the alumni magazine - the monthly version appears in The Independent newspaper on the first Tuesday of every month. The second annual edition will be posted to everyone in May this year. With a circulation of 350,000, it must be the most widely read alumni magazine in the world!
The Alumni website is well worth visiting. You can register your interests and receive personal monthly updates by email of all new services and current events.
A key event is the Alumni weekend around Open Day 2000 on June 24th. Why not come along to Walton Hall with your families? Alternatively you can, for the first time, visit the Virtual Open Day on the OU Website.
I encourage you all to think of yourselves as lifelong members of a unique academic community and to value that association. Let me end by mentioning three growth areas in this very exciting period of development.
First, the OU curriculum continues to expand. Next month we shall launch Openings, a new series of access courses. Then in November we begin undergraduate Business Studies. Meanwhile many areas of the University are producing short courses for professional development and we intend to be the major provider of the new Foundation Degree.
Second, the OU continues to expand its international reach. This year sees the launch of the first courses by our sister institution, the United States Open University - a new university for a new millennium. There are now some 30,000 people taking OU courses outside the UK.
This year we celebrate the tenth anniversary of our teaching in the former Soviet bloc. So far that has involved over 60,000 student-courses in six local languages. You can all be immensely proud of the impact that OU teaching has had, not just in giving management and business skills to thousands in Russia and Central Europe, but also in helping, through the influence of Open University values, to construct the civil society that the citizens of those countries so keenly desire.
Finally, the OU is already the leading e-university. More than 80,000 OU students are now online from home and they generate a communication traffic of tens of thousands of messages every day, seven days a week. In this context I particularly appreciate the work of the Student Association, OUSA, which does an excellent job moderating hundreds of computer conferences. Through OUSA’s involvement student preferences and interests are having a major influence in moulding the OU as the model e-university.
Thanks to these and other developments your University will continue to thrive. Fraser Woodburn and all my colleagues join me in wishing you every success as graduates and in thanking you for being part of the Open University.