OU joy tinged with sadness

The daughter of one of The Open University's first students collected a posthumously awarded degree on behalf of her father last week after a retrospective rule change entitled him to an ordinary degree 30 years after he completed his studies, writes Paul Hill.

Peter Swinger registered for an arts and technology course with The Open University in 1970 but fell 60 credits short of the 360 he needed for an honours degree when he finished his course six years later.

Mr Swinger decided to try to complete the course in the late 1990s, with the aim of graduating at the same time as his daughter, Carys, who was studying for a BSc in biology and earth sciences. But he died while his daughter was in her third year before he had resumed his studies.

Ms Swinger, 28, explained that at the time she received a letter informing her she had been awarded an honours degree, her mother simultaneously received a separate letter from the OU telling her that a review of the rules meant that Mr Swinger's 300 credits entitled him to an ordinary degree.

Ms Swinger, a school science technician from Suffolk, collected her own and her father's degree certificates at a ceremony in Ely last Saturday. She carried a photograph of her father when she collected his scroll.

"For them to change the rules in the year that I graduate is pretty amazing," Ms Swinger said. "I just wish we could tell him about it."

* The Open University has launched a £2 million advertising campaign to stress that "learning is as necessary to people as heat and light".

The campaign - which first aired on June 5 on ITV, Channel 4 and Five - will run throughout 2005.

The promotion, which has the theme of "powering people", includes advertisements in national and regional newspapers. It uses the revamped OU logo - now a metallic silvery blue shield rather than the old blue and yellow colour scheme.