UEL has spent more than £190 million on its Docklands campus, which opened in 1999, and is now unrecognisable from its early days as a pioneering polytechnic.

Student residences and recreational facilities sit side by side with academic buildings in a prize-winning waterside development for more than 7,000 students.

The latest developments saw the opening of the business school and Knowledge Dock, a support centre for local companies, in September 2006.

A £40-million student village lining the Royal Albert Dock added another 800 beds in 2007. The campus has helped to attract big increases in applications to UEL: the university bucked the national trend with a third successive substantial rise when top-up fees were introduced and applications were up by another 8 per cent at the start of 2007.

New campus

Student numbers have shot up from 12,000 to 20,000 since 2001. The capital’s first new campus for 50 years, within sight of London City Airport, has given the university a new focal point, with its modern version of traditional university features like cloisters and squares.

Students of fashion, fine art, graphic design, product design, media and cultural studies were first into new premises, followed by UEL’s highly rated School of Architecture and the Visual Arts and electrical and manufacturing engineering in 2005.

Business, computing and technology have now completed the academic set. The university’s original campus in Stratford is also being redeveloped, with a new library and learning centre, student residences and facilities for part-time and evening courses.

The Centre for Clinical Education in Podiatry, Physiotherapy and Sports Sciences, incorporating the new London Foot Hospital, opened there in April 2006. New buildings for education and law are next on the development plan.

The Barking campus closed in 2005, replaced by a lifelong learning centre run in partnership with the neighbouring further education college and the local council. With research in media studies judged to be nationally outstanding and sociology and art and design on the next grade, UEL was among the leading new universities in the last research assessments.

Psychology, English and architecture did well in teaching quality assessments, but communication and media studies, and electrical and electronic engineering both registered unusually low scores. Engineering did better in a more recent assessment, when environmental sciences and law were also highly rated.

Access

Teacher training courses, too, were given good marks by the Office for Standards in Education, while finance and accounting achieved the best results in the university’s debut in the National Student Survey. UEL’s focus is more concerned with extending access to higher education than competing with the elite universities.

Barely more than half of the new first year intake now arrive with A levels and a majority are over 21 on entry – many choosing to start courses in February, as 1,000 students did in 2006.

Many degrees are vocational and employers are closely involved in course planning. The university has pioneered a work-based learning initiative, offering accredited placements with local employers. Almost half of UEL’s students come from working-class homes, many from the area’s large ethnic minority population.

A successful mentoring scheme for black and Asian students has become a model for other institutions. A guidance unit advises local people who are considering returning to education. The university is also strong on provision for disabled students and houses the new Rix Centre for Innovation and Learning Disability.

The projected dropout rate has been improving considerably – the latest figure of almost 23 per cent is better than the national average for UEL’s courses and entry qualifications. Graduate employment rates have also been improving, with the university working on both retention and employability through mentoring and placement programmes that involve almost 1,000 businesses, including many in the City or Canary Wharf.

Accommodation

University-owned accommodation is still not plentiful for the number of students, although there are now more than 1,100 flats and studios on the Docklands campus and the rents are good value for London. Because many choose to live at home, all first years who request accommodation are housed.

The social mix means that UEL has not been the place to look for the archetypal partying student lifestyle, although the new campus is beginning to change this. New students’ union premises have been added on both the Stratford and Docklands campuses, each of which also has some sports facilities.

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