This also we take as our ambition. In thirty years the Open University has set alight the fires of many minds. I am sure some of them are here tonight. Each year the OU holds more than twenty degree ceremonies and it is my great privilege as Vice-Chancellor to officiate at most of them. I make a point of having a brief conversation with all the graduates who are presented to me and in the last eight years some 40,000 graduates have told me what OU study has meant to them personally.
Various themes recur again and again.
To the question 'which course did you enjoy most' I have had responses covering every offering in the prospectus. Even when our staff feel that a particular course did not represent their finest hour as academics it always proves to have been the divine afflatus that lights the mind fires of some students. But two statements occur repeatedly in these conversations. Many graduates say that OU study has given them confidence. Thousands have told me that it has changed their lives.