Scottish Degree Ceremony, Edinburgh 1998-05-09 Morning

Vice-Chancellor's Address to the Graduates

It has been a pleasure to celebrate the success of our graduates this morning.

I bring greetings to you all from our Chancellor, Betty Boothroyd. She would have liked to be here again this year. Sadly, her duties as Speaker of the House of Commons made it impossible . But she is here in spirit and sends her warm congratulations to the graduates, to their families and friends, and to all the OU staff and tutors.

Last week, at a conference in Glasgow, the Minister for Higher Education, Brian Wilson, set out his vision of a Scotland in which there would be no street, no housing scheme, no village where people thought higher education was not for them. That vision has illuminated the Open University in Scotland from the beginning. That mission to reach out to the people has inspired successive generations of OU staff and seen successive generations of OU graduates who were the first in their family to have a university education.

That is why we welcome the Government's announcement of extra help for part-time students who are unemployed or on low incomes - augmenting the OU's existing schemes of financial assistance which will have helped some of today's graduates. We are eager to help the Government meet its access targets because the OU is the largest single provider of part-time study opportunities in Scotland. We already reach into all communities, from the inner cities to the outer isles.

We are proud also of our partnerships with Scottish institutions. A programme that we have developed with the University of Dundee provides new opportunities to study Scottish history. We are strengthening our links with the Further Education Colleges in order to provide degree programmes, through the OU, for people with Higher National Diplomas and Certificates. In association with Glasgow, Napier and Paisley universities we are helping to deliver more opportunities to the people of Dumfries and Galloway. We are proud to be a key partner in the University of the Highlands and Islands project.

So much for our activities and our ambitions. We are as international as the ninety countries of the world in which OU students wrote exams last October. Yet we can be as local as each home in Scotland. Today's graduates are as diverse as Scotland itself.

It has been heart-warming to meet you individually. You said that an OU degree is hard work but most of you seemed to enjoy it. That encourages me to give you a final test before we release you from OU study. It's like a CMA - that's a Computer Marked Assignment - but correction will be immediate.

Each question is a short quotation. You have to identify the source.

If you are ready for number 1 the quotation is:

"The Open University is one of the UK's great education success stories"

1. The OU Public Relations Office
2. The Department for Education and Employment
3. Sesame
4. The Financial Times

The paper includes a number of case studies to illustrate its vision of the future and none is more glowing than its account of your University. You should be proud. The accomplishments that the Government praises are yours.

Let's move to question 2. The quote is:

"The Open University is still synonymous, for many, with daytime broadcasts and late night television - the cutting edge of distance learning when it began in the late Sixties. But now its Business School is teaching students all over the world the same MBA course via the Internet"

1. The Wall Street Journal
2. Sesame
3. The Economist
4. The Observer

But onto my next question. The quote is:

"Forget the old image of middle-aged housewives watching anoraks teaching thermo-dynamics at 3am. The OU is now dead cool, with the largest number of students aged 25-45. Whatever the stuffed shirts said in the 1960s, no-one doubts the excellent of its degree courses today. Its reputation is global".

1. Lord Puttnam
2. Peter Mandelson
3. The Independent
4. Naomi Campbell

And the last question in this quick version of University challenge. My final quotation:

"From a lifetime's experience as a businessman, and from my wife's experience as a student of the Open University, I have to say that the Open University is one of the most efficient and customer-sensitive enterprises I have come across... It is a tremendous UK export. Its professionalism, its capacity to continually add value, and the reliability of its systems in delivering learning on a huge scale all distinguish the Open University as a world leader... The Open University is simply the best."

1. Lord Simon
2. Lord Archer
3. Rupert Murdoch
4. Richard Branson

One reason the OU attracts such plaudits is that my OU tutor colleagues and our Scottish staff measure their own success by our students' success. This year our staff here have welcomed a new Director of the OU in Scotland, Mr Peter Syme. He is a Scot returning home after a distinguished career in England that included appointments in the Department of Education and Science and a highly successful period as Director of the Open University in London. We're proud to have such an outstanding colleague at the helm in Scotland in these exciting times.

Our staff in Scotland include our very dedicated group of associate lecturers who are located all over Scotland. They are sincerely committed to our mission, deeply engaged in the deployment of new technologies, and thoroughly engaged in their own professional development. Some of our associate lecturers will receive their own accreditation through SEDA, the Staff and Educational Development Association at these ceremonies.

I expect that today's graduates feel indebted to all the OU people who supported them, especially when they were discouraged. Let's show our appreciation for their work.

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I know there are other people to whom you, as graduates, feel grateful. It is wonderful to see in today's gathering so many of the graduates' family members, relatives and friends. We're delighted you are here.

Success in the Open University depends on the tolerance and support of others. All of you who have had OU students in your home or in your circle of friends are aware of the impact of OU study on family and social life. I expect you are now helping your graduate rediscover forgotten aspects of real life.

Help is now at hand for redecorating the house and tidying the garden! But before you list the chores I know that the graduates would like to thank those who have supported them through their studies. Let's have a round of applause for the support of your families, friends, and colleagues?

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This year the OU will award its 200,000th Bachelor's degree and it has made some 50,000 postgraduate awards. As graduates you are part of a huge global OU community that is a force in the world. We want you to keep in touch with the OU. You can join the Association of Open University Graduates and this year we are introducing new ways for you to stay in contact.

You can read the special OU supplement, Open Eye, that will be now published with the Independent on the first Thursday of every month. The first issue appeared this week. You can join the OU On-line community which goes live this month and can provide you with a free personalised home page on the Web and an e-mail address for life.

In short, we are creating special links for the graduates of a special University.

Just how special is made clear in a best selling book about Britain written by an American. On the last page of Bill Bryson's "Notes from a Small Island" he writes:

"What other nation in the world could have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardeners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None of course."

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