Now one of the UK’s largest universities with 30,000 students, Plymouth has been carrying out major restructuring to concentrate activities in its home city.

The original aim was to break into the research elite while still serving the region through teaching, but the new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Wendy Purcell, who graduated from the university in the 1980s, has declared a new mission to make Plymouth the top ‘enterprise university’.

Nevertheless, Plymouth entered by far the largest number of academics of any new university in the 2008 Research Assessment – twice the proportion entered by some of its peer group. More than a third of the submission was rated world-leading or internationally excellent. Computer science produced by far the best results, but civil engineering, geography and environmental science and art and design also did well.

The most controversial element of the restructuring involved the transfer to Plymouth of courses from the Seale-Hayne agricultural campus, near Newton Abbot.

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Moving and development

The arts and humanities programme has also moved from Exeter and education courses from Exmouth. Plymouth has also seen the opening of a £30-million headquarters and a second teaching building for the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, a joint enterprise with Exeter University.

The library on the main North Hill campus has been extended and upgraded and the students’ union refurbished. A £35-million arts complex opened in 2007, housing the Faculty of Arts and the Plymouth Arts Centre.

Teaching facilities and residential accommodation for the education courses transferring from Exmouth cost another £40 million, while a £11-million building for the Faculty of Health and Social Work, overlooking the Drake Reservoir, includes sports facilities as well teaching space.

Plymouth opened a £1-million Immersive Vision Theatre, thought to be the first of its kind at a UK university, in 2008. The IVT is used for a variety of subjects in the sciences, arts and medicine, with projection onto the dome giving the audience a strong feeling of being ‘in’, rather than just observing, different types of image.

The next development will see the launch in 2009 of the new School of Marine Science and Engineering, building on Plymouth’s worldwide reputation in this field. With 1,400 students and 85 staff, the school will be the largest of its kind in Europe.

The Peninsula quickly established itself and was the only successful bidder for a new dental school in the last national competition. The school, which will train 64 dentists a year, opened in 2007.

With campuses in Plymouth, Exeter, Truro and Taunton, along with teaching facilities in Bristol, the university’s Faculty of Health and Social Work is the largest provider of nurse, midwifery and health professional education and training in the southwest.

Partner colleges

The university is a partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall, which is boosting further and higher education in one of the few counties without its own university.

Plymouth has also established a unique relationship with its 16 partner colleges, which spread from Cornwall to Somerset, through a faculty devoted entirely to serving their 5,300 students taking university courses. They have become the University of Plymouth Colleges, sharing £2 million in capital investment.

Participation

The intake reflects Plymouth’s position as the working-class hub of the southwest, with 95 per cent of students state-educated and a third from the poorest social classes.

The projected dropout rate of 14 per cent is below the national average for the courses and entry grades. Plymouth was chosen to house no fewer than four national teaching centres - in health and social care placements, experiential learning in environmental and natural sciences, institutional partnerships and education for sustainable development – as well as a the national subject centre for geography, earth and environmental sciences and the Royal Statistical Society Centre for Statistical Education.

No university has exceeded the 11 National Teaching Fellowships won by its academics. It is also taking part in a national pilot of two-year degrees.

The university offers a lively social scene, with excellent and recently upgraded facilities for water sports as well as a thriving nightlife. An £850,000 fitness centre has improved the sports facilities, while a range of sports scholarships and bursaries will help support high-fliers. A £15-million scheme has also seen the construction of a 1,300-bed student village.

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