Like the 13th-century Earl of Leicester after whom the university is named, De Montfort has a fiefdom of sorts: in this case a network of campuses in a 50-mile radius.

Based on what was Leicester Polytechnic, the new university spread ever outwards, making it the biggest in the region. But DMU is now putting more than £100 million into consolidating a more manageable estate, some of it provided by the city council and local businesses.

The Milton Keynes outpost closed in 2003, following the transfer of campuses in Lincolnshire to Lincoln University, and the Bedford campus has been sold to form half of the new Bedfordshire University.

There are now only two campuses, both in Leicester, following the relocation of health and life sciences to the university’s headquarters. Another 12 colleges are associates, linked into the university’s network and offering its courses.

Investment

A formal agreement commits the colleges, which stretch from north Oxfordshire to Grantham, to work with each other as well as with De Montfort. The investment includes a £9-million campus centre, incorporating a new students’ union, music venue and other facilities, which opened in September 2003.

Part of the ring road is being diverted to allow the university to open up the 15th-century Magazine Gateway building, which will become the focal point of a university quarter with public open spaces and new links to the city centre.

A £35-million building for business and law, due to open in September 2009, will be at its heart. The £3.7-million creative technology studios feature video, audio and radio production suites, recording studios and laboratories with the latest broadcast and audio analysis technology.

Innovative

A Performance Arts Centre for Excellence (PACE) has already opened, allowing the university deliver innovative teaching for students of dance, drama and music technology. The 24-hour library has been remodelled with wireless networks and rooms equipped with audio visual and IT facilities for preparing presentations.

The university has an uncompromisingly vocational emphasis in its courses, but has also invested in research. Probably the most innovative example is the Institute of Creative Technologies, which will act as a catalyst for research that defies the traditional boundaries of computer science, the digital arts and humanities, and is already exciting the interest of the business world.

There were successes in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, when DMU registered the highest proportion of subjects of any new university in the top three categories. Politics and English were only one grade off the top of the seven-point scale, while the total of eleven subjects on the next grade was easily the highest among the former polytechnics.

Full marks

Teaching ratings improved after a patchy start, with politics and international studies achieving full marks and the sport and leisure courses only one mark short of the maximum. The professional accounting courses were awarded “premier” status in a worldwide accreditation scheme, and the university houses a national teaching centre for drama, dance and theatre studies.

The latest National Student Survey saw a big improvement on some poor results in the first two rounds, with history and archaeology, politics, and finance and accounting producing particularly high levels of satisfaction. De Montfort’s range of programmes has been expanding and student enrolments are healthy.

Among the recent additions is a BSc in Public and Community health, tackling issues such as increases in sexually transmitted infections and obesity. The dropout rate has improved considerably: at less than 16 per cent, it is now exactly the national average for the university’s courses and entry grades.

The university is abandoning semesters and going back to a three-term year, partly because it believes the prospect of imminent assessment encouraged some students to give up at Christmas in their first year. De Montfort has a proud record for widening access to higher education with 41 per cent of students coming from working-class homes.

It was one of the first to set up an employment agency to help students find part-time work during their course of study as well as find careers upon graduation.

Strong links with local business and industry manifest themselves in courses such as the BSc in media production, run in conjunction with the BBC, and in the provision of facilities such as the telematics laboratory sponsored by Orange, the mobile telephone company.

Accommodation difficulties have been addressed – five new halls of residence opened in 2003. All first years, apart from locals, are now guaranteed a place in halls.

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