Recording engineer graduates at the age of 74

A sound recording engineer who worked on the hit 1960s musical movie Oliver! will become one of the oldest graduates at a North Wales university when he dons his cap and gown next month – at the age of 74.
 
Clive Collins, of Llanddulas, returned to study five years ago after deciding to broaden his education following a 50-year career as a recording and communications engineer.

Firstly achieving A-levels in History and Law, he became an undergraduate student on Glyndŵr University’s Public and Social Policy degree three years ago.
 
Remarkably Clive, one of 10 engineers who worked on Oliver! when he was based at Shepperton Studios, overcame the setback of missing 12 weeks of the degree through illness.

He will collect his award in a ceremony at the University’s William Aston Hall at the end of October.
 
Clive said: “I’m the first person in my family to get a degree so I guess it’s quite an achievement. I was having a bad day when my lecturer phoned to break the news, as I’d had some sad family news earlier, so to hear I’d passed came as a welcome surprise.
 
“The only trouble is that now I’ve got a degree, people are expecting me to go on and do more and more!” added Clive, who started an MSc in Management at Glyndŵr University this month.
 
Achieving a degree has fulfilled Clive’s ambition of gaining the education he missed out on when he was younger.

He left school at 15 and began an apprenticeship, then, after a four-year spell as a regular soldier with the British Army, Royal Corps of Signals, from 1953-57, went on to work for Associated Television and at Shepperton Studios.
 
Clive, originally from Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, moved to North Wales in 1972 and set up his own company, Dart Aviation, sourcing and selling specialist communications equipment to the airline industry.

All in all, he worked in 36 countries worldwide during his career, before diluting his involvement with his company a few years ago.

“The driving which was involved was getting rather tedious and I was starting to get easily tired, so now I just do as much work as I want to,” he added.
 
“Since I stepped down a little from the company, I found myself with more time on my hands and I wanted to complete my education.

“When I was 18 the only chance you had of getting a university education was if you were the son of a doctor, a lawyer or a bank manager. There simply weren’t the opportunities to go as there are now. My father was an engineer, so that’s the career that I went into.

“The biggest sorrow is that you become a mature student and, studying at my age, you can see where you went wrong. I’m 74 years old now but if I’d had an honours degree when I was 24, I could have done so much more with my career.”

Clive reflects proudly on his return to education – and his surprise at fitting in with fellow students 50 years younger.

“The whole experience has been very satisfying,” said Clive. “As a mature student I was looked on rather curiously, and receiving so much respect from the younger generation came as a bit of a shock. But with the experience that I’ve had in life, young people wanted to get to know me and to hear about my experiences.
 
“One young girl came to me one day and said ‘Clive, do you know anything about World War Two?’ Well, I lived through it, of course, so that was it – I ended up giving a 20-minute mini-lecture to a group of 10 or so students about the war.”