A university accessible to all

The principal and now vice-chancellor of the new University of the Highlands and Islands will speak of his vision for a learner centre in every community when he addresses around 800 guests at a celebratory event today (Thursday, 25 August).

An academic robing ceremony, including the presentation of the university's new mace, takes place from 4.30pm at Eden Court Theatre in Inverness. It will be followed by a procession to the Town House in Inverness for a civic reception hosted by the Provost of Inverness, Councillor Jimmy Gray.

During his address, James Fraser, principal and vice-chancellor, will say: "Our vision is to lead a learning region. We want every community to have a learner centre that can access our education. We want to make university education accessible to students hitherto hindered by geography, social class or any other barrier. We believe that a flexible delivery model, operating on a 365 day year, will deliver this ambition, will be attuned to the social and technological trends of our age, and will have global significance."

Other extracts read

"Our university was born in interesting times. The challenges of our times, environmental, economic, social, present unprecedented opportunities for the new university. We are situated in the epicentre of the new renewables industry; of the revival of oil and gas exploration of the North Sea. We have a better connectivity with the rest of the world than ever before.  Both our teaching and our research reflects our magnificent environment in all its beauty and complexity; in the richness of its language, history and material culture, and in the distinctive challenges of rural, and sometimes fragile, communities, and in the more universal themes of health and social studies."

"If I may be personal for a moment, it has been my great privilege to stand on the shoulders of predecessors and grasp the prize of title itself - a privilege enhanced by the fact that I am a Highlander of Highlanders and the third generation of my family to have the opportunity of a university education. My great aunt, Mary Maclean, a native of the parish of Coigach went to the University of Glasgow from Dingwall Academy before the First World War. Her niece and my mother, Anne Mackenzie, went to the same University from Ullapool School, before the Second World War. I went to Edinburgh University from Plockton High School in 1966 -we all shared one inescapable and immoveable circumstance -we were not able to avail ourselves of the choice of completing a university education in the Highlands and Islands itself. Today we have ensured this choice for our children and their children unto countless generations."

The chair of the governing University Court, Professor Matthew MacIver CBE, will also give a speech in which he will talk about the University of the Highlands and Islands as "arguably the key institution in the regeneration of the Highlands and Islands throughout the 21st century."

Extracts from his speech

"This is a day of celebration when we celebrate the fact that we now have a university in a part of Scotland that has over the centuries specialised in exporting our brightest intellectual talent to the universities of the central belt of Scotland and beyond.

"Today, however, we acknowledge the vision that now ensures that students from the Highlands and Islands can study at home, can enjoy the same academic benefits as other students and can be exposed to the same intellectual rigour as any other student. They can, of course, leave, just as mine and other generations did. But they do have the option that we did not have and that is important.

"They can study courses that are relevant to their way of living, to their history, their culture and, in many cases, to their language."

"We are sending out a message that we are a new university and, as such, we have the opportunity to develop a new approach to higher education in Scotland. We can do this with a distinctive curriculum and a delivery that brings together traditional methods of teaching and new technology."

"We have to be ambitious for this university and for this special part of Scotland. I see this place of learning as the institution that will be instrumental in driving the whole of the area forward in social and economic terms. It will arguably be the key institution in the regeneration of the Highlands and Islands throughout the 21st century."