Napier was Scotland’s first and largest polytechnic, and also appointed the first woman to lead a university north of the border.

Professor Joan Stringer moved from neighbouring Queen Margaret University College (as it then was) with the declared aim of making Napier “one of the leading modern universities in the United Kingdom”.

It is now in the midst of a £100-million redevelopment programme to help achieve that ambition.

Now an institution of more than 13,000 students, with 3,500 part-timers, it has continued to grow, largely thanks to increased recruitment from the Continent and further afield. Around 17 per cent of full-time undergraduates are from overseas.

Multimedia

• The Times University Guide table

Related Links

• Edinburgh Napier University

Multimedia

• Napier University official site

International

An International College, launched in 2007, offers them a dedicated service, with pastoral and recruitment activities, as well as support for Napier’s many programmes in China, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The demand for places has remained buoyant at a time when it has faltered elsewhere in Scotland. Growth in applications of almost 14 per cent at the start of 2009 was the latest in a series of healthy increases.

Ambitions

Two new libraries, a purpose-built music centre and refurbishment of the science laboratories underlined Napier’s ambitions, with a £5-million computing centre completing the first phase of the university’s development plan at the university’s headquarters in Merchiston, the student district of Edinburgh.

This was followed by the £30-million transformation of the university’s Craiglockhart campus, a one-time military hospital where Scotland’s biggest business school has been built. It features a glass atrium housing a cyber café and two spherical lecture theatres with a total of 600 seats, and a new fitness suite was added in 2007.

Next on the list is the Sighthill campus, in the west of Edinburgh, which will be closed throughout 2009–10 while construction work takes place. Sighthill will become home to the Faculty of Health, Life and Social Sciences, bringing the faculty under one roof for the first time in a sustainable and well-equipped building for teaching and learning. New sports facilities are among the other improvements planned for the campus, complementing council proposals for an athletics arena nearby.

The university is named after John Napier, the inventor of logarithms. The tower where he was born still sits among the concrete blocks of the Merchiston campus. There are several smaller sites, mainly in the leafy south of Edinburgh, but the eventual aim is to have one campus for each of the three faculties.

Model

Napier has been held up as a model to other universities trying to reduce wastage rates. The university uses its own students to mentor newcomers, runs bridging programmes and offers pre-term introductions to staff and information on facilities, as well as running summer top-up courses in a variety of subjects.

The Confident Futures programme helps students make the transition to higher education and teaches employability skills and personal development. However, the latest projected dropout rate of more than 16 per cent is still more than the UK average for the subjects on offer.

Library and information management achieved by far the best results in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, when just over a fifth of the university’s submission was considered world-leading or internationally excellent. A new Skillset Screen Academy, run in partner-ship with Edinburgh College of Art, reflects the university’s strong reputation in film education.

Vocational

Most of the avowedly vocational courses include a work placement, and the close relationship with industry and commerce helps to produce consistently good graduate employment figures. The modular course system allows movement between courses at all levels and has allowed students the option of starting courses in February, rather than September. Links with a network of partner colleges encourage progression from further to higher education.

The dispersed nature of the university does nothing for the social scene, although Edinburgh is hardly dull. Some students find life too quiet in the evenings and at weekends, although the students’ association, in partnership with local clubs, organises regular party nights in the city centre.

Times recommends

• Students face big rise in university fees
• Students to rate lecturers online
• Lord heads team to look at raising tuition fees