I have been a proud graduate of the University of Central England in Birmingham (UCE), I have enjoyed my alumni status for over 10 years, and have followed the multiple changes (both upgrades and declines) to the institution over that time.

I must admit I was quite shocked to see that UCE had changed it name to Birmingham City University (BCU)! I vaguely remember seeing an email asking me to vote on a variety of potential names (Birmingham City University, Birmingham Chamberlain University and Birmingham Metropolitan University) and thinking to myself, why?

It is what it is! They have traded in a quite verbose name for BCU, which at least mentions the city in which the university is located. I guess I need to get new copies of my certificates. I do wonder, as far as my job goes, how much people care about my qualifications 10 years removed from graduation?

Have you ever had a hankering to take a college course but did not have the money or the time to sit down in a classroom. Maybe a small yearning for Writing and Humanistic Studies or Linguistics and Philosophy, or peradventure some Brain and Cognitive Sciences. Well then MIT Open Courseware maybe the site for you.

MIT Open Courseware provides free lecture materials that includes exams, videos, and lecture notes for the renaissance persons among us, who are simply in love with learning.

To be clear this is quite different to distance learning you will not be granted a degree or certificate, neither does it allow you access to MIT facility, but if there is a field of study that you always wanted to investigate, then I would check this site out and see if there are some free downloads for you to enjoy.

I decided that I may try Relativistic Quantum Field Theory I ;)