In September 2021, NMITE opened its doors to its first students. 27 pioneers embarked on an accelerated Masters Degree in Engineering (three years rather than four). We’d designed and launched the only accelerated engineering MEng degree in the UK, with an aim to get engineers into the workplace sooner, and with less debt.
The course itself was structured for students to study 9am-5pm, 46 weeks per year, on projects set by industrial and community partners. In its design, the course would give students the right support and experience to ensure they have the best chance at graduating career-ready, all whilst providing the downtime they deserve to the benefit of their wellbeing. We also shifted the barriers to entry for applicants, and selected them based on their attributes and motivation, not just their previous academic achievements. We introduce relevant mathematical concepts to our students as they encounter them in an engineering context, which means we can accept students onto our programmes that might not have studied maths at A level before. We’ve been implementing and improving our model since. We’ve enrolled a further three cohorts, with the latest seeing NMITE double its student population. We’ve also added new courses to provide more choice and more entry paths for students.
Now we’re two years in, we are starting to build data that allows us to explore how well our model is working and whether we are achieving the vision.
Almost half of our students are local. Before NMITE, these promising young people would have had to leave the county to study engineering at degree level and we know that many really value being able to stay with their families whilst they study. A fifth of our students don’t have traditional academic qualifications but join us with relevant work experience that prepares them for the rigour of our courses. Many of these students are older and preparing for more ambitious careers in the engineering professions. We are proud to be providing talented local people from all backgrounds an opportunity to gain a high-quality engineering degree in their own hometown. We hope and expect that many will stay in the region after they graduate and make a contribution to the economic and social life of the county.
We monitor how well our students are doing on their courses and how much they are enjoying their experience of student life with us. The early results are hugely encouraging. When compared to benchmarks used by the wider Higher Education sector, NMITE students are learning faster and progressing better than their peers in traditional universities. Our student numbers are small, and it’s early days, so whilst we are encouraged by this, we never allow ourselves to become remotely complacent about our progress.
We have much more work to do to encourage more female students into our courses. We have a higher proportion of female students than other institutions, but we are some way from achieving the gender balanced cohorts we are aiming for. Gender balance is a tough nut to crack in engineering so we will continue to examine the barriers that female applicants feel and work to eradicate them over time. We also want to encourage more applications from people from less well-off backgrounds – and will continue to use bursaries and scholarships (funded by generous local donors) to remove at least some of the financial barriers these talented young people face.
We work very hard to uphold academic standards - quality is something of an obsession for us. We spent the first two years of our journey under the quality supervision of the Open University, and we will always be grateful to that other great UK university innovator for their support and guidance. Earlier this year we secured our own powers to award degrees after a long and onerous external assessment process. We are the first Herefordshire institution to achieve such powers so feel a great sense of responsibility and duty to use it to benefit the county and its young people. Our degree awarding powers means that our students can be assured that an NMITE degree is at least as valuable and rigorous as a degree from a traditional university.
NMITE students report a real sense of achievement, of ‘learning week-by-week’. They are uncommonly articulate, a fact that surprises visitors, but which we attribute to a studio-based learning environment, constant interaction with industry partners and our extensive use of oral assessment. Our students are used to having to share their thinking process and justifying their proposals.
So, the early signs are that our learning model works. Maths can be integrated into an engineering programme. A studio learning environment and challenge-based curriculum are enhancing professional skills and student agency. And finally, the environment, plus rich and varied learning and assessment methods do allow all students to shine without being forever anchored to characteristics they entered with.
We are very mindful of the need to sustain these early signs of effectiveness through to graduation and beyond. We want to see all our students enjoy their experience with us, graduate with a good degree and then win high value jobs or start their own successful businesses.
Getting NMITE off the ground has been hard work but, with the support of many local partners and supporters, we are confident we are carving out a vital role in the national Higher Education landscape and the civic life of the county. Most importantly, I know we are creating new opportunities in Herefordshire that were not there before and changing many lives for the better.
