West of England (UWE) is the largest provider of higher education in the south-west of England and one of the most popular post-1992 universities, both in terms of total applications and the proportion – one in four – who subsequently choose to study there.

Applications were up by another 7.5 per cent at the official deadline for courses beginning in 2009, following several years of increases earlier in the decade.

The university has sometimes found itself in trouble for missing its benchmarks for widening access to higher education, but official reports now accept that this is largely due to its location.

The proportion of independent school entrants has dropped to 11 per cent – still a figure exceeded by only one new university – while the share of places going to students from working-class homes is approaching three in ten.

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• The Times University Guide table

Related Links

• University of the West of England, Bristol

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• University of the West of England official site

UWE has one of England’s largest bursary schemes, with annual bursaries of £1,000 going to about a third of its students. The projected dropout rate had been coming down but, at nearly 20 per cent, is now well above the national average for the university’s subjects and entry qualifications.

Satisfaction

The university has improved its scores in the National Student Survey and is now in the top half of the table. There were particularly high levels of satisfaction in biology, film studies and photography, forensic sciences and physical sciences in the results published in 2008.

Unusually, the university trains and pays its 900 student representatives – the biggest such network in the country. More than half of the students come from the West Country and there are close links with local business and industry. These provide guest lecturers, professors involved in practice and thousands of part-time jobs and work placements for students.

A tradition of vocational education regularly helps the university to a healthy graduate employment record. The entrance system credits vocational qualifications and practical experience equally with traditional academic results.

Law received a commendation from the Legal Practice Board and the degree in architecture and planning won a similar accolade from the Royal Town Planning Institute for bringing together the two disciplines in one joint-honours course giving dual professional qualifications. UWE is one of just four universities recognised by the Forensic Science Society for the quality of courses in the subject.

Only two new universities entered more academics than UWE in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. More than a third of the work was judged to be world-leading or internationally excellent, with physiotherapy and other health subjects, media studies and general engineering produced the best results.

Campuses

There are four sites in Bristol itself, mainly around the north of the city, with regional centres in Bath, and Swindon concentrating on the growth area of nursing. Only Bower Ashton, which has new studio space and media suites for its art, media and design students, is in the south.

The main campus at Frenchay, close to Bristol Parkway station but four miles out of the city centre, has by far the largest number of students and includes the Student Services Department, which brings together the various non-academic services. The university has purchased land to double the size of the Frenchay campus.

The St Matthias campus (for social sciences and humanities) and Glenside (for midwifery, nursing, physiotherapy and radiography) are more attractive but less lively.

A network of 15 colleges stretches into Somerset and Wiltshire, offering UWE programmes. Hartpury College, near Gloucester, has become an associate faculty of the university, specialising in agriculture, equine studies and other land-based courses, and there are university centres in hospitals in Bath and Swindon.

Bristol is a hugely popular student centre: an attractive and lively city, but not cheap. University accommodation has become more plentiful in recent years, with over 4,000 places available, including nearly 2,000 in a new £80-million student village on the Frenchay campus. Sports facilities were a bone of contention for students, but a new sports complex opened in 2006 as part of a £300-million investment programme, which is one of the largest in UK higher education. It has been chosen as a pre-Olympics training site for badminton, fencing, table tennis, indoor volleyball and wrestling.

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