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.

Already an institution of more than 14,000 students, with 4,500 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.

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. A 12 per cent rise in applications in 2007 and near parity at the start of 2008 both represented the best figures north of the border.

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.

Transformation

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. Napier has been held up as a model to other universities trying to reduce wastage rates.

Mentoring

There is a student mentoring scheme, “bridging programmes” offering pre-term introductions to staff and information on facilities, and summer top-up courses in a variety of subjects. The latest projected dropout rate of 16.5 per cent represents a big improvement on the previous figure, but is more than the UK average for the subjects on offer.

Computing and accounting achieved the highest possible scores in the teaching quality assessments carried out in Scotland between 2000 and 2002. Health subjects, general engineering, civil engineering and library and information management all did well in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise.

A new Skillset Screen Academy, run in partnership with Edinburgh College of Art, reflects the university’s strong reputation in film education. 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.

Students are offered personal development programmes focusing on topics such as self awareness, empowering attitudes and building relationships. 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. Despite improvements, some students find life too quiet in the evenings and at weekends.

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