Hereford's NMITE, the New Model Institute for Technology & Engineering, can now award degrees

Published by

Peter Davison

NMITE has received degree awarding powers from the Office for Students

Hereford's planned new university has taken another major step forward.

NMITE, the New Model Institute for Technology & Engineering, has received degree awarding powers from the Office for Students.

The powers mean NMITE can award its own accelerated bachelors and masters degrees in Integrated Engineering, as well as new non-accelerated degrees, foundation courses and a pioneering new BSc in the Sustainable Built Environment from September of this year.

James Newby, President and CEO at NMITE, said: "The important element for us, and our students, is that we have proved ourselves in terms of academic quality and are delighted that our practices have been considered academically robust.

"We see this as an endorsement of our new model and our academic pedagogy. Students choose us because of our size and innovative approach, not despite it.”

NMITE has taken the decision to start with The Open University (OU) as its validating partner.

“This collaborative approach has worked well for us, giving us access to advice from an experienced provider with their own extremely high standards but one which is also amenable to new models.

"We are very proud to have worked with The Open University, who have been both innovative and adaptable, another example of a great Higher Education innovator,” said James.

Viren Patel, Director of Employers & Partnerships, The Open University, added: “The Open University is delighted that NMITE has achieved this significant milestone.

"The Open University's core mission is to embrace inclusivity by being open to individuals, locations, approaches, and concepts and this is further amplified through validated collaborations with other education providers.

"The Open University is dedicated to extending educational opportunities to communities that might not have otherwise had the chance to experience such an innovative and transformative learning approach and our partnership with NMITE exemplifies this.”

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NMITE’s James Newby regularly speaks about the need for new providers in education, the need for government to adopt the same positive and nurturing attitude to new education providers as it does for new business start-ups and the “no innovation without risk” agenda.

He explains NMITE’s new model of engineering education is vital as the current Higher Education system does not attract enough diverse engineering students - more female engineers, more from less well-off backgrounds and more from different disciplinary backgrounds.

Before NMITE, Hereford was one of only a handful of counties in England not to have a university.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.