Remarks
upon being conferred an Honorary Doctor of the University
at the convocation of The Open University
by
Dr. H. Ian Macdonald
Chairman
The Commonwealth of Learning
Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
13 June 1998
Chancellor, Ladies and Gentlemen
The story is told of a young university graduate reporting to work for his first job. His employer greeted him, and promptly handed him a broom. "What is this for", inquires the young man? "That's your job - sweeping the floor", answers the boss. In righteous indignation, the new employee draws himself up to his full height and proclaims: "But I have a B.A. degree!" "Well, just relax", is the reply: "We'll show you how to use it!" Now that I am an Honorary Doctor of the University, what might I expect next?
How ironic it is that the things we value most are so often the source of our humour. In fact, there is nothing that could give me greater satisfaction than such an honour from The Open University, because this great body of university graduates represents what is becoming an endangered concept in the public policy of so many countries: universal accessibility to higher education. Just prior to my departure from Canada, I received word of the death of a dear friend and a prototype of what you represent, in vast numbers, in The Open University. In the early 1950's, when I was a student in Balliol College, Oxford, the College established an Open Scholarship for a mature student, working in a modest job. Leaving his family in the Midlands, my friend came to Oxford, lived in the College, entered fully into university life, and after three years took a distinguished degree. From a background of various humble positions in a hospital, John went on to become a distinguished professor of hospital administration - first in England and finally in Australia. This is not to denigrate his earlier work, nor to suggest an elitist purpose for higher education. Rather, I am speaking of the opportunity for maximising individual human achievement.
That Oxford should have made a place available in that fashion inspired him, and left an indelible impression on me. As a result, I have often speculated that had the Open University been created fifty years earlier, perhaps I might have become a fellow graduate of my Scottish parents, each of whom was obliged to leave school at age fourteen and, shortly thereafter, sought a new future in Canada. The Open University has transformed the meaning of accessibility to university, and made it a living reality. And so, the beneficiaries are not only the legion of graduates, but also the community of nations wherever those graduates reside. Although Elgar was not thinking in those terms when he wrote, "Wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set", accessibility to education is surely the best route to a "Land of Hope and Glory". Unfortunately, as we approach the millennium, we are still falling short by 140 million children, of the pledges made to achieve universal access to basic education by the year 2000.
To help in bridging that gap is the purpose of The Commonwealth of Learning and the reason for my commitment as volunteer Chairman. Dedicated to distance education and open learning, in the face of the limitless need and demand across the Commonwealth, The Commonwealth of Learning draws on the inspiration of The Open University at the very time that huge increases in tuition fees are diminishing the hopes for access to university of many potential students in my own country. Happily, your example will sustain us, and this new Doctor of your university will continue to fight the good fight for accessibility to all, at every stage of life, fortified by the wearing of these robes of one of the world's great universities.
H. Ian Macdonald
13 June 1998
