Is this tiny engineering institute really the future of HE?

Jesse Norman MP has lauded the New Model Institute for Technology and Engineering (NMITE) as an institution “not just focused on marginal educational gain, but on transformational improvement”. 

“It aims to reinvent not just what students learn, but how they learn”, the representative for Hereford and South Herefordshire, who also serves as the institution’s chair, told the House of Commons.

Norman has been one of NMITE’s most enthusiastic backers, but he is far from alone in endorsing the institution that has just attracted its largest ever intake. In its four years in operation, NMITE has attracted political and media attention far beyond its small stature and is often heralded as “the future of higher education”.

The tiny engineering institution in Hereford – which despite record growth in enrolments still only has around 160 students – does not conduct traditional exams, offers condensed degrees, and, unlike most engineering courses in the UK, does not require students to have A-Level maths. 

James Newby, NMITE’s president and chief executive, said its radical nature was established from its conception, adding that traditional university models are “failing” the depth and diversity of student needs, as well as the nation’s skills shortage, noting that many companies have claimed that engineering graduates are often not workforce-ready.

“The traditional model that most students still go to university in the form of a three-year, largely residential undergraduate degree has barely changed in 50 years, and I always felt that was something open to challenge,” he said.

“The fact that you get two years of undergraduate content and spread it over three years to create an undergraduate programme is just not a very efficient way of doing it for the student or the university and increasingly for the taxpayer, as well as for the employers who need the graduates.”

He says the difference between working at NMITE and his previous institution the University of Surrey – which he described as “fantastic” – is “chalk and cheese”. He claims he knows “every student by name”, and as he walks throughout the institution, he often stops and chats with the students – something that would be unheard of at a larger university. 

At NMITE’s core is a mission to serve students often overlooked by the university sector. The decision to place the provider in Hereford was an active decision to address one of the country’s higher education “cold spots”, and to “put the institution where the people are”. 

Part of this mission to increase accessibility into engineering resulted in the university rethinking what was necessary for students to succeed at NMITE. Peter Metcalf, associate professor and academic lead for curriculum partners, explained that after mapping the curriculum, it was determined that critical maths skills weren’t needed until students’ third year of studies, “so why make maths an entry requirement for the first year”, he questioned. 

According to the government, only a third of A-level maths pupils are girls, and Metcalf said, “if you want 50 per cent of your students to be female, that means you either have only two students – one boy and one girl – or you find a way to remove that barrier”.

“When you remove that padlock, you open up your potential applicants considerably,” Metcalf said, explaining that students without A-Level maths are offered additional lessons to get them up to speed as well as the skills being integrated into the courses. “That in itself is a lesson about engineering and education,” he said.

This policy has resulted in demonstrable impact. Newby and Metcalf said that they had accepted students with A-Levels in English literature, geography and psychology, and even one student with geography, art and biology – far away from traditional engineering routes. Some 58 per cent of their students didn’t study maths.

“That means almost three-fifths of our students wouldn’t have been able to do engineering, and then they wouldn’t become engineers,” Newby said. The institution also believes that its block teaching model allows students to be immersed in their studies, and visits from industry partners throughout the term allows teaching to be tailored to industry needs.

While many universities across the UK have been cutting courses and staff, NMITE is growing its offerings. It recently announced a new collaboration with the British Army to offer a course on autonomous systems, and Newby said it is looking to grow its student population to around 500-600 students.

However, he is conscious that numbers need to be kept low at the campus to maintain its student experience – a marked departure from other universities that have looked to continuously grow their intake in response to the sector’s funding crisis.

The smallness is “intentional”, he said, and while NMITE is considering “setting up another campus in another part of the city to do a different range of courses, that smallness is hugely important”.

Academics across the campus noted that NMITE has “a different feel” compared to universities under financial strain. Many were at other universities prior to joining NMITE, and note they left feeling “worn down” by the workloads and a feeling that growing student numbers meant they weren’t getting to know who was in their classes. 

So is NMITE’s model one that the sector should be looking to replicate? Newby isn’t so sure. For him, it’s about ensuring that there is diversity in provision within the sector to best serve as many students as possible. 

“From the beginning, we’ve been about offering a new kind of university course, often for a new kind of undergraduate,” he said. 

“There’s innovation happening up and down the country in the traditional sector. We never claim to be the answer here at NMITE. We’re offering an alternative model that we think is right for some students, but not all students,” Newby said.

“We really think we are an important contribution to the innovation we think the sector needs. So we see ourselves as a kind of test tube for practising new models that ought to be supported and generate interest.”

juliette.rowsell@timeshighereducation.com