Open engineering specialists in university ‘deserts’ – thinktank

The UK government has been urged to make £50 million available to fund the creation of up to 10 new engineering-focused institutions in “university desert” towns as a way of addressing skills gaps and ending the NEET crisis.

Thinktank Policy Exchange said the providers should be modelled on Hereford’s New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE), known for its cheaper two-year degrees, links to employers and widening participation initiatives.

Preferential treatment should be offered to the new institutions, a report published on 20 October argues, including an expedited Office for Students registration process, with mayors or local authorities handed the power to co-invest.

Backing the findings, former education secretary David Blunkett said “differential access to skills is one of the key drivers of regional inequality across Britain”.

He added that Policy Exchange “argues convincingly that a new wave of NMITE-type institutions could contribute to the government’s goal of ensuring we ‘value the hard hat as much as the graduation cap’, providing valuable opportunities to talented young people in cold-spot communities, for whom the system is not delivering”.

Releasing its findings ahead of the final report by former health secretary Alan Milburn, who has been looking at why 1 million young people in the UK are not in education, employment or training (NEET), Policy Exchange argues that the country suffers from a “crisis in alignment”, with about 250,000 job vacancies going unfilled.

Data shows that only 9 per cent of UK undergraduates study engineering, manufacturing or construction, below the OECD average of 13 per cent and far lower than in countries like Germany and China where numbers are above a quarter.

New NMITE-type institutions could provide young people with high-quality technical education ready for deployment in the workplace, Policy Exchange argues, urging the government to establish a £50 million seed development fund to support up to 10 new providers set up in “cold spots”.

The report names areas best suited to hosting one of these new institutions as Hartlepool, Grimsby, Barnsley, Blackpool, Burnley, Scunthorpe, Runcorn and Widnes, Blackburn and Doncaster.

They are 10 of 57 towns and cities of 60,000 or more residents with no university of their own and which are characterised by weak progression to higher education, deprivation and industrial concentration.

Eight of the 57 – including Eastbourne and Southend – are currently losing a university presence as existing institutions constrict their campuses, which Policy Exchange argues “offers the chance to repurpose existing sites”.

Politicians have long argued that England needs new “challenger” institutions to offer innovative models of higher education but most have struggled to get off the ground because of the high cost of starting up and difficulties convincing students to bypass a more traditional institution.

NMITE has been hailed one of the more successful of the alternative providers that have been started up in recent years but its backers have stressed that it has succeeded “against the odds” and it remains small in terms of student numbers. 

Policy Exchange said NMITE’s model works because of its compressed curriculum – students graduate with a master’s degree in three years instead of four – which means £12,060 less debt than a conventional programme.

Its curriculum was designed in partnership with 80 firms, which go on to hire many of the graduates taking the programme. One such employer is the British Army, which helped develop the MEng in Autonomous Robotics that launched earlier this year.

James Dyson, whose Dyson manufacturing firm runs its own higher education provider, said: “Britain doesn’t produce enough engineers. Only about one in 11 British graduates studied engineering or related subjects. Without them, we can’t make things, invent new products and technologies – or compete against the rest of the world. Britain needs many more places like these. This report shows how to build them.”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com