UEA was one of the big winners in the first three national student satisfaction surveys, finishing in the top ten every year, with psychology, economics, and history and archaeology producing outstanding results in 2007.

Most subjects showed high levels of satisfaction: students appear to like the scale of this relatively small campus university, as well as the quality of its courses, but the news is only beginning to get through to sixth-formers.

Applications were down by 9 per cent when top-up fees were introduced and the following year’s increase was lower than the national average, but demand had barely dropped at the start of 2008 when most universities saw a sharp drop with the switch from six choices per candidate to five.

Development

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The university has been engaged in an ambitious building and refurbishment programme on the 320-acre site on the outskirts of Norwich.

It has included 560 more en-suite student bedrooms, a new health centre, the extension and refurbishment of the central library, catering facilities and students’ union, as well as a new building for the schools of Nursing and Midwifery and Medicine. The work has allowed the expansion of specialist provision for students with disabilities and other learning and health difficulties.

Health studies have been among UEA’s fastest-developing areas. The university was awarded one of the first new medical schools for 20 years, graduating its first doctors in 2007, and has since added pharmacy and speech and language therapy degree courses. Some of the broad subject combinations that the university pioneered from its origins in the 1960s – such as development studies and environmental sciences – are highly regarded in the academic world. With successive 5* ratings for research and an excellent teaching grade, environmental sciences is the flagship school.

The Climatic Research Unit and the Government-funded Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research are among the leaders in the investigation of global warming – UEA contributed more than any other university in the world to the 2007 Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. History and film studies added to the 5* research grades in 2001.

Subjects

Philosophy and politics joined American studies as the top performers in the teaching assessments. Like the English degrees, one of which includes starstudded creative writing, American studies is heavily oversubscribed. With authors Michèle Roberts and Andrew Cowan taking up where Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, and the late Malcolm Bradbury left off, the attraction of creative writing for both undergraduates and postgraduates remains undimmed.

Art history is another strong subject, aided by the presence of the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, perhaps the greatest resource of its type on any British campus. The centre, which has been refurbished and extended, houses a priceless collection of modern and tribal art, in a building designed by Lord (Norman) Foster. Almost nine out of ten undergraduates come from state schools or colleges, but less than a quarter have a working-class background.

Since 1999, most have had the opportunity of work experience as part of their course. An academic adviser guides all students on their options under the modular course system and monitors their progress right through to graduation. Dropout rates have fluctuated, but the latest projected figure of 8 per cent is below the national average for UEA’s courses and entry qualifications. Most students come from outside the region, although there is an unusually large contingent of mature students for a traditional university, who tend to be more local.

The university also runs a programme of over 200 evening and day courses across Norfolk and Suffolk. The number of university-owned beds has increased considerably, ensuring that first years can be guaranteed accommodation unless they live locally. The excellent sporting facilities are based around the £17.5-million Sports Park, which boasts an Olympic-sized swimming pool, fitness and aerobics centres, athletics track, climbing wall, courts and pitches. Student membership is only £17.50 a year, with discounted rates for all facilities.

Sports

The university was chosen as the base for the English Institute of Sport in the East, developing a sports science network for the region. The university is situated in parkland, with easy access to the medieval city of Norwich, which can boast a pub for every day of the year and was voted one of the best small cities in the world in the 2007 Liveable Communities awards. Rail links to London now take less than two hours, while Norwich airport offers flights through Amsterdam and Paris worldwide.

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