Foreign Perspectives

In fact they’ll take anyone from age 21 on upwards.

The impact on this policy is quite interesting as you get an amazing spread of ages in many courses. Now, to be fair, for the majority of courses the lower age range is generally around 25 or so but that’s only because most people younger than that will have chosen to go to a normal university.

The effort that many of those over 65 put in is quite staggering. One guy in the French course was 80 if he was a day and put everyone else completely in the shade in terms of his ability to use the language.

We’ve a guest tonight who is plugging away with a history degree “just to keep his mind active”. The OU doesn’t work like that though and many who start courses just to potter along end up much further on than they would ever have expected. After all, I just started the French with a view to being able to speak it properly and find myself six years down the line on the home run (fingers well crossed!) to a Modern Languages degree!

I still remember one member of our little Saturday morning group sitting on the settee and announcing that he only started French so that he could order a cup of coffee and no way was he doing any more French courses. Just over two years later he picked up his French Diploma and is currently working on the Spanish one.