With over 33,000 students, including more than 6,000 part-timers, Manchester Metropolitan is neck and neck with its recently merged neighbour for the title of the largest conventional higher education institution in Britain. But the giant institution boasts quality as well as quantity: more than a third of the work entered for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise was rated as world-leading or internationally excellent. Education, English and art and design produced the best results.

Access

Although the former polytechnic has not been able to sustain the lead it held briefly over Manchester University in applications, still only a handful of institutions are more popular. The demand for places has grown throughout most of the decade and there had been another 12 per cent increase in applications at the start of 2009. Longstanding commitments to extending access are being continued: even among the full-time undergraduates, a fifth are over 25 and more than a third come from working-class homes.

Teaching

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Almost 1,000 courses cover more than 70 subjects, with the menu of programmes including a growing range of two-year Foundation degrees. The university takes teaching seriously: small groups are used whenever possible and staff are encouraged to take a three-year MA in teaching. Many courses also involve work placements. MMU has more professionally accredited courses than any other university

Education courses have also fared well in the Teacher Training Agency’s performance indicators, especially for primary training. The university trains more teachers than any other and has launched a Centre for Urban Education to develop its expertise further. Some 800 trainees and other students taking contemporary arts and sports science are at the former Crewe and Alsager College campuses, 40 miles south of Manchester and now rebranded as MMU Cheshire. The remaining education students are based at Didsbury, five miles out of the centre of Manchester, with those taking community studies. A single Institute of Education covers both centres.

Location

The Crewe and Alsager campuses are six miles apart, but free transport is provided between the two. Although the rural location inevitably makes for a quieter life than in Manchester, Alsager has an arts centre with two theatres, a dance studio and an art gallery, as well as extensive sports facilities. The Crewe campus, which has seen a district of the town rebranded as the University Quadrant, has its own nightclub. The university has begun to develop Crewe as its Cheshire base, adding sports facilities and residential accommodation, as well as more lecture theatres. The opening of a £30-million student village is the first piece of a rebuilding programme at Crewe, which will be home to academics and students in business and management, the arts, exercise and sport science, humanities and social studies, education and teacher training.

The five sites in Manchester will eventually be reduced to two linked campuses. The university will move from leafy Didsbury in the southern suburbs and create a £70m 'campus for the professions' in the city centre that will be one of the most environmentally-sustainable in the UK, uniting provision for teachers, nurses, health and youth workers. The new site is close to the existing All Saints campus, on the university’s border with Hulme and Moss Side.

Development

New science and engineering buildings at All Saints cost £42 million – part of a £300-million building programme for the university as a whole. The large business school will benefit from a new £65-million building next to the Mancunian Way. Overseas links have expanded rapidly in recent years, offering exchange opportunities in Europe and farther afield, as well as establishing teaching bases abroad.

However, more than half of the students come from the Manchester area, easing the pressure on accommodation in a city of nearly 70,000 students. Some 85 per cent of hall places are reserved for first years, with priority going to the disabled and those who live furthest from the university. The city’s attractions do no harm to recruitment levels, but much depends on where the course is based; students at Crewe and Alsager can feel isolated. Some potential applicants are daunted by the sheer size of the university, but individual courses and sites usually provide a social circle.

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