24 October 1998
Graduates, Members of the Northbrook College Community, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It has been a pleasure to celebrate the success of all the graduates and award winners this afternoon. I must say a special word of congratulation to those whose progammes and degrees are given under the authority of the Open University.
I bring greetings to you all from the Chancellor of the Open University, Betty Boothroyd. She would have liked to join us today because she enjoys degree ceremonies but her duties at the House of Commons are very demanding. I assure you that she is here in spirit and sends her warm congratulations to the graduates, to their families and friends, and to all the staff of Northbrook College.
The staff of Northbrook College serves the students in a particularly dedicated and innovative fashion under the leadership of your Principal Michael Thrower. He is a dynamic influence on the national education scene and I thank him for his assiduous attendance at our Open University degree ceremonies in Brighton each year. It is also a pleasure to pay tribute to your Chairman, Stanley Elliot, who has played such a wise and crucial role in the College’s development since the beginning.
Northbrook College has come an amazingly long way in a short time. It was only in 1986 that the West Sussex College of Design, the Worthing College of Technology and Chelsea College came together to form a new institution. In only twelve years you have blended several very different cultures together into a vibrant educational community. The Open University is proud to have contributed to your evolution and we note with pleasure the developing quality and diversity of your programmes.
Your colleagues at the OU congratulate you on your splendid performance in the Teaching Quality Assessment for Art and Desing where you scored 21/24.
I am sure that today's graduates feel indebted to all the Northbrook people who supported them, especially in moments of discouragement. Let's show our appreciation for their work.
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Today's graduates know that success as a student depends on the tolerance and support of others. I know there are many people to whom they feel grateful. It is wonderful to see so many of the graduates' family members, relatives and friends here today. We're delighted you are here.
You are all aware of the impact of study, particularly part-time study, on family and social life and I expect that you are now helping your graduate rediscover forgotten aspects of real life.
Help is now at hand for redecorating the house, cleaning the car and other home chores. But before you dream up new tasks 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, colleagues and fellow students?
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Today’s graduates whose degrees are awarded through the Open University are joining a large, worldwide community of OU graduates. Let me say a word about that.
This year the OU awarded its 200,000th Bachelor's degree and it has made some 50,000 postgraduate awards. So as graduates with OU degrees you are part of a huge global OU community that is a force in the world.
This year we have introducing new ways for you to stay in contact with than community.
You can read the special OU supplement, Open Eye, that is now published with the Independent on the first Thursday of every month. The next issue will appear on Guy Fawkes Day.
Or you can join the OU On-line community which was created in cyberspace earlier this year. It can provide you with a free personalized home page on the Web and an e-mail address for life. We want the OU to be the most interesting and diverse community of thinking people in cyberspace and we would like you to be part of that. I hope you will be proud of your link with Northbrook College and proud of your link with the OU.
Northbrook College and the Open University share important values. When the Open University was founded, in the week in 1969 that the Apollo astronauts returned from the first moon landing, our first Chancellor gave us an inspiring mission. He said that the Open University would be ‘open as to people, open as to places, open as to methods and open as to ideas.
Let me take those four aspects of openness one by one. Northbrook College is working hard to be open to more people. As well as expanding its higher education programmes it is also increasing its access offerings and those for people with special needs. This is all part of its very successful strategy of keeping close to the people and businesses of the local community. Meanwhile the Open University continues to expand its numbers and provision.
With 150,000 students in degree programmes – and tens of thousands more doing Vocational Qualifications and other studies – it is one of the world’s largest universities. Each year the OU adds new programmes for people to study at home – this year it was Law – and our associated colleges like Northbrook also add new programmes.
In today’s global society it is important for all educational institutions to be open as to places. I am delighted that Northbrook College now has students from 40 countries. I am sure that they enrich the experience of the British students as well as gaining themselves by studying with you.
In being open as to places the Open University does not bring students to the UK but takes its courses to them. There are now 25,000 students taking OU courses outside the UK and in our present exam session people are writing OU exams in nearly 100 countries. This year we have set up a sister university, the Open University of the United States, to bring OU curriculum and methods to that huge country.
Open as to methods is a theme that resonates well at Northbrook because your curriculum covers a wide range. Your programmes in art and design that we celebrate today are at the cutting edge of teaching and learning in clothing design, textiles, media, photography and fine art. Then you have your extremely successful programmes in aeronautical and automotive engineering on the Shoreham campus, which use very different methods.
At the Open University a key challenge is to migrate to the use of the new learning technologies at the right pace. This year there are 40,000 OU students on-line from home and they exchange nearly 200,000 e-mail messages every day. This is a wonderful new communications medium that is binding our community together in new ways.
Finally, what about being open as to ideas? That means ensuring that we are intellectually up to date and that the education and training we offer reflects best practice. I admire the way that Northbrook College has integrated its different areas of specialty, as in your programme of Marketing and Design for Business that bring together the Division of Art and Design and the Division of Business. It is also a pleasure to congratulate you on the exceptional results that you achieve in the field of Engineering.
That resonates particularly with me this month, because the Open University has just received the results of the national Teaching Quality Assessment in General Engineering. I am proud to say that we scored the maximum of 24/24, which is a great tribute to our staff and to the 18,000 OU students taking technology courses. I understand that some very famous universities did not match the OU’s score, but it would be discourteous of me to name them here.
So you can see that Northbrook College and the Open University seek the same goals and aim for the same standards as we try to fulfil the mission of being open to people, open to places, open to methods, and open to ideas.
Finally, a few words to the graduates.
In the United States they call these degree ceremonies ‘commencement exercises’. That seems odd, because you are celebrating the end of a phase of your studies. But in another way today is the first day of the rest of your life – your life as a graduate. What advice do I have for you?
First, that you should never stop learning. The motto of the Open University, stamped on your degree certificates, is Learn and Live. We live in a fast-changing world and the way to enjoy it and keep pace with it is to keep learning. Some of you will come back to Northbrook College in future for further studies. If you move away from Worthing then the Open University is there wherever you are and would like to be the University for the rest of your life.
Your Principal, Mike Thrower, is a splendid example of commitment to lifelong learning. This year he has completed a Doctor of Philosophy degree with Sussex University on the work of the German philosopher Hegel. Let us congratulate him on this achievement.
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My second piece of advice is to remember that your studies at Northbrook College have given you two qualities. First, they have given you competence in a professional area. Keep that competence up to date and value the professionalism that you have acquired here.
The other quality you acquire in a university programme is to use reason and argument. Treasure that. We live in a society that likes instant answers and hates to be left in doubt. But instant answers are often wrong answers and a state of doubt is often the right attitude for an intelligent person to take.
So value your own professionalism but do not be afraid to challenge professionals in other areas and aks them questions. As well as being expert and competent in your own field you are citizens of your country and citizens of the world. As graduate citizens you have a special responsibility for helping your country and your world to develop in ways that provide the greatest good to the greatest number.
Take that task seriously too. Ask questions. Make proposals. Don’t let people label you and put you in a little box of specialism. We are all involved in humankind and we all have a responsibility for our fellow human beings.
I conclude by thanking you for studying at Northbrook College in association with the Open University. I wish you all success as graduates and I ask you all, Ladies and Gentlemen, to show your appreciation and congratulations to all today’s graduates with another round of applause.