Naming itself after a football pools millionaire was just the start for one of the most innovative of the new universities.

JMU was once accused of marketing itself more as a fun factory than a seat of learning, but the former polytechnic prefers to portray itself as “forward-thinking”.

Among the initiatives to its credit was Britain’s first student charter, which became a template for others. It also launched the first degree in criminal justice and the first distance learning degree in astronomy.

Now it is investing £100 million to transform its three campuses by 2012. A Design Academy is due to open in 2008, during Liverpool’s tenure as the European Capital of Culture, and a £20-million science building is set to follow in 2009.

Futuristic

Before university status had even been confirmed, JMU set about transforming itself into a huge, futuristic multimedia institution. The two learning resource centres serving different academic areas and a state-of-the-art media centre are open all hours.

Many lectures have been replaced by computer-based teaching, freeing academic staff for face-to-face tutorials. Student numbers increased substantially in the early years of the decade and applications were up again by more than 10 per cent in 2007, having held steady against the national trend when top-up fees were introduced.

Applications were still healthy when the official deadline passed for courses beginning in 2008. Mainly concentrated in an area between Liverpool’s two cathedrals, the university is now one of Britain’s biggest with more than 21,000 students.

Arts and science courses occupy separate sites within easy reach of the city centre, with the IM Marsh campus three miles away for education and community studies.

Local

JMU has retained a local commitment to higher education, with more than 60 per cent of the students drawn from the Merseyside area, some attracted by the range of diploma courses which still supplement the largely vocational degree programme.

A “learning federation” embracing four further education colleges in St Helens, Southport and Liverpool itself adds to the regional flavour. A growing research reputation is a source of particular pride, and is reflected in an unusually large number of postgraduates for a new university.

JMU was one of only two new universities to have a subject rated internationally outstanding in the latest Research Assessment Exercise. Sports science made the step up from a grade 5 in 1996 and has now been marked out as a national teaching centre.

General engineering succeeded in holding onto grade 5 and four more subjects reached the next category. Astronomy has a growing reputation, with a part share in a telescope in the Canary Islands, which helped secure a Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 2006.

The International Centre for Digital Content, a partnership with Mersey Television, is developing a range of new courses, including masters programmes in computer games design and e-commerce. A £1.6-million maritime centre features the UK’s most advanced 360-degree shiphandling simulator.

Facilities

The new science building will include the schools of Psychology and Sport and Exercise Sciences, allowing the university to concentrate most of its teaching and research in science and technology on one city centre site. The faciltities will include a 70-metre running track and specialist laboratories.

The impressive range of courses in hospitality, leisure, sport and tourism achieved a perfect score for teaching quality, as did physics and the healing and human development courses in the School of Health. JMU is one of the most popular of the new universities, judged in terms of applications per place.

The university’s efforts to extend access to higher education are successful: there are significantly more state-educated undergraduates than average for the subjects offered and more than a quarter come from areas where participation in higher education is low.

Work credits

Work-based degrees give students credit towards their final awards for experience in the workplace and encourage them to build study projects around their job, while the campus also build in work-related skills and experience. The university launched a curriculum review to address concerns about the dropout rate, which fell to 21 per cent in the latest projections – still higher than the official benchmark for the university.

Student facilities have been improving. The conversion of a city-centre hotel was one of a number of residential projects which have allowed the university to guarantee a place for young entrants from outside Merseyside, including those who enter through Clearing. The university now claims to have more accommodation than students requiring it.

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