The former Luton University has never looked back since taking over De Montfort University’s Bedford campus and establishing the University of Bedfordshire in 2006.

The move made the new university the main provider of higher education in a relatively prosperous county and allowed it to shed a name that – however unfairly – had become a liability.

In fact, Luton’s teaching ratings were described by no less an authority than Charles Clarke, as Education Secretary, as “bloody brilliant”, but there was no escaping the unglamorous image.

Applications for courses beginning in 2009 were 22 per cent up at the beginning of the year, following equally impressive rises in the two previous years.

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Development

With two quite different sites to its name, the new university is expanding and developing. It has already spent £60 million on the two main campuses, adding a well-equipped media arts centre and an impressive learning resources centre in Luton.

The Bedford redevelopment is now complete, with a new campus centre comprising a students’ union and a 280-seat auditorium, as well as an accommodation block for 500 students. Two new gyms and a series of sports science laboratories opened in 2006. A free shuttle bus service operates between the two sites.

The next stage will cost £70 million and should be completed during the 2010-11 academic year. There will be a new student centre at the heart of the Luton campus and extensive new residential accommodation.

The Bedford campus, once a teacher training college, is a 20-minute walk from the town centre in a “self-contained leafy setting”. It houses the Faculty of Education and Sport, with 3,000 students and plans for more. Although there are partner colleges in Bedford, Dunstable and Milton Keynes, the bulk of the students remain in Luton. The centrepiece of the campus, in the midst of the shopping area, is the striking atrium which leads into the learning resources centre.

There is also an attractive management centre and conference venue at Putteridge Bury, a neo-Elizabethan mansion three miles outside Luton. Nursing and midwifery students in the growing Faculty of Health and Social Sciences are based at the Butterfield Park campus, near Luton, which opened in 2008, or at the even newer Oxford House development, in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.

There are additional teaching facilities at Stoke Mandeville and Wycombe General hospitals. A postgraduate medical school is run in partnership with Hertfordshire and Cranfield universities, as part of the Government’s £1-billion investment in healthcare across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.

Vocational

Courses in the new university maintain the vocational character that Luton pursued after dropping a number of traditional academic subjects. The portfolio of two-year Foundation degrees, for example, is among the largest in the country, stretching from football studies and specialist make-up design to sustainable construction and animation for industry.

The university pioneered electronic assessment, with more than 10,000 students in disciplines from accountancy to biology tested by computer. Bedfordshire students also benefit from a national centre of excellence in personal development planning and employability, awarded to Luton in 2005.

Students

Almost all of Bedfordshire’s entrants are from state schools and 43 per cent come from working-class backgrounds. Nearly two-thirds are mature students, many taking access courses to bring them up to degree or diploma standard. About a third of the school-leavers arrive through Clearing and nearly as many students take part-time courses. Surprisingly high numbers – nearly a quarter – are from outside the EU, many of them taking postgraduate courses.

The university celebrated much-improved results in the 2008 Research assessment Exercise, registering at least some ‘world-leading’ work in earth systems and environmental science; social work, social policy and administration; sport, tourism and leisure; English language and literature; and communications, cultural and media studies.

Neither Luton nor Bedford is particularly famous for its social scene, but both have their share of pubs, clubs and restaurants. London is only half an hour away by train for those seeking something livelier. There is enough accommodation to guarantee a place for all first years, and the sports facilities are improving, albeit from a low base in Luton.

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