Having waited a couple of years longer for university status than the group of higher education colleges promoted in 2005, Buckinghamshire New University has been making up for lost time.

The first phase of a £200-million campus redevelopment was due to be completed for the academic year beginning in 2009 and students have been responding enthusiastically to a portfolio of innovative courses and an attractive package of financial support and extra-curricular benefits for students.

The 33 per cent rise in applications at the start of 2009 was one of the biggest ever recorded by a UK university.

The redevelopment will allow most students to be based at the main campus in High Wycombe - the exception being those taking nursing, who are to move into a new building in nearby Uxbridge. The new Gateway Building at High Wycombe will transform the town-centre campus with improved teaching, social and administrative space.

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The complex will include a new sports hall, gym, treatment rooms and sports laboratory, which will be available to the public as well as to students. At the same time, collaboration with two of the world’s biggest IT companies is developing one of the most advanced student networks in UK higher education. An outdoor sports village is in the next phase of the university’s ten-year development plan.

Sport and business

Sport is an important part of life at the new university, which sponsors the London Wasps rugby union team in a partnership which trades coaching for Bucks students for courses for Wasps players.

But the university’s main aim is contribute to the social and economic life of the region, embracing workplace learning and close ties with local businesses.

Employees of the bed company, Dreams, which is based in High Wycombe, will take a new Foundation degree in retail management while at work, for example. Bucks has also won awards for its training of commercial pilots and its courses for music industry management. Other Foundation degrees include one for the motorsport industry and another in “protective security management”.

Students

There are more than 9,000 full and part-time students, 90 per cent of whom are taking first degrees and a third of whom are over 25. Nearly 60 per cent of the students are female.

Academic departments are divided into three faculties: Creativity and Culture, Society and Health, and Enterprise and Innovation. Only 26 staff were entered for the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise – half of them in art and design, which registered the only ‘world-leading’ research. However, an institutional audit expressed “broad confidence” in academic standards.

The projected dropout rate for undergraduates entering in 2006 had risen to 14 per cent, but this was still lower than at most comparable institutions and more than three percentage points better than the national average for its subjects and entry qualifications. Nor was this achieved by neglecting the Government’s widening participation agenda: almost all the entrants are from state schools or colleges, and more than a third are from working-class homes.

Support

The university has a particular focus on student support, devoting more than a third of its fee income to bursaries – one of the biggest proportions in England. In 2009-10, all full-time UK undergraduates (apart from nursing students, who are eligible for Government bursaries) received an annual, non means-tested £500 cash award.

In addition, the Big Deal scheme offers free entry to all entertainment events, free use of all sports facilities and a programme of extra-curricular activities such as lessons in cookery and motor mechanics. The university also pays student representatives.

Disappointment

One disappointment has been consistently low scores in the National Student Survey, which has left Bucks in the bottom five for the last two years. The extensive building work on the main campus may have been a factor. Its own annual survey, carried out by independent academics, has been more complimentary.

Town

Beyond the campus, High Wycombe has the usual range of pubs and clubs for a medium-sized town, but will not be a magnet for students. The university has opened an art gallery in the main shopping centre to showcase students’ work, as part of its efforts to maintain a strong relationship with the town.

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