Middlesex University

History

The university grew out of merger between different schools and colleges in North London. The oldest and perhaps the most prominent was the Hornsey College of Art, founded in 1882. Other institutions included Ponders End Technical Institute (founded in 1901) and Hendon Technical Institute (founded in 1939). All three were amalgamated to form Middlesex Polytechnic in January 1973.

Before becoming a university in 1992, Middlesex expanded further by adding three more colleges in north London. While continuing to grow through mergers in the 1990s, the university had also begun developing its international presence, by opening regional offices in continental Europe. As of July 2011, it has been operating 21 such offices worldwide.

Since 2000, the university launched a major restructuring programme, which translated into a total image rebrand in 2003, the closure of a number of campuses over 2005–2012, the expansion of other campuses and the consolidation of the university's activities on fewer, bigger campuses in north London.

Timeline

Restructuring

In May 2001 the university appointed C Eye, a branding consultancy, to design a new logo. In 2003, the previous "M" logo was replaced with a new red-coloured wavy line intended to express a flexible and responsive approach to the needs of students.

Following the review of the sustainability of its academic programmes, the university implemented a series of cost-containment adjustments over 2005–2006. In late 2005 it decided to stop offering history courses in an attempt to reduce a £10 million deficit.. The decision was met with hostility from Middlesex's student union as well as from the National Union of Students. In other moves to save costs, the university made 175 voluntary redundancies, including 33 academic staff, a measure that was intended to save £5 million.

Since 2000, Middlesex has embarked on a strategy to achieve 'fewer, better campuses' to reduce costs and improve its long-term sustainability. The strategy translated into the disposal of several small arts campuses in Bedford, Hampstead and Wood Green and the larger, but still uneconomic and unattractive campuses at Bounds Green, Enfield and Tottenham. The university also closed the Corporate Services building at the North London Business Park and consolidated most of the functions carried out on these sites at Hendon, where it aims to accommodate nearly all its London-based teaching.

In 2010, Middlesex announced the closure of its Philosophy department, because it was judged to be not financially sustainable. This was despite the fact that it had been the highest ranking department in the university's latest Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) in 2008, building on its grade of 5 in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise. An international campaign of support was quickly organised, with figures such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jean-Luc Nancy, Slavoj Žižek, Étienne Balibar, David Harvey, Isabelle Stengers expressing their strong disapproval. Articles condemning the decision appeared in the national press and students protested on campus and elsewhere for its restitution. In early June 2010 it was announced that the postgraduate component, the CRMEP, was to be transferred to Kingston University, but the undergraduate programme was still to be phased out.

Campuses

Over the past five years the university has consolidated most of its activities onto the Hendon campus in London with all teaching is located at Hendon from autumn 2013. All older campuses were closed – Bounds Green (2003), Tottenham (2005), Enfield (2008), Cat Hill (2011), Trent Park (2012), and Archway and Hospitals (2013) – while Hendon received substantial investment in facilities and infrastructure to accommodate new students and programmes.

Since 2004, the university has also been operating an overseas campus in Dubai and opened another one in Mauritius in October 2009. In September 2013, Middlesex opened its third international campus in Malta.

London: Hendon

The Hendon campus is located in North West London,near Hendon Central tube station. Today's main (or college) building was built in the neo-Georgian style by H.W. Burchett and opened in 1939 as part of Hendon Technical Institute (aka Hendon College of Technology). The college was extended in 1955 and in 1969 when a new refectory and engineering block (the Williams Building) were added.

The main building has been refurbished in a £40 million project, which included the addition of a glass-covered central courtyard forming Ricketts Quadrangle. In 2004 The new Learning Resource Centre, The Sheppard Library opened on the site. Hendon also has a sports club, known as The Fitness Pod for students and staff which has one of the few real tennis courts in the UK. Middlesex University Business School, Engineering & Information Sciences School and the bulk of the School of Health and Social Science are located in Hendon.

The campus in Hendon is expanding dramatically using a number of London Borough of Barnet office buildings including the current Town Hall in The Burroughs as well as the construction of new buildings including a new state of the art Science Building which opened in September 2008. The research centres for biomedical science, crime and conflict, and risk and environmental sciences are based here.

The university aims to achieve the consolidation of nearly all its London based teaching at Hendon.

In 2011 the university opened 'The Grove' a new building for creative courses, featuring dedicated workshops and classrooms as well as exhibition areas.

Subject focus: Business – accounting and finance, economics, human resource management, law and marketing; Art and design – photography, fashion, fine art, interiors, product design, Media and performing arts – dance, drama, media, TV production, Computing – business information systems, computer networking and computer communications; Health and social sciences – criminology, politics, psychology, social work, sociology, world development studies, and complementary health. Also biomedical and biological sciences, nursing, sport sciences, public health, risk management and media.

In October 2013, the university opened a new sports science facility at Allianz Park (the new stadium of Saracens Rugby Club) in Hendon.

Dubai

In 2004, the university opened a campus in Dubai, UAE, in Dubai Knowledge Village, a free economic zone. It is a joint venture with Middlesex Associates, a business consortium in Dubai. The campus is spread over nearly 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m²) and is the first Middlesex campus outside North London. The first programmes, mostly in Business Studies, were offered to students from January 2005.

The campus is licensed by Dubai Knowledge and Human Authority (KHDA), and its programmes are approved by the KHDA. In August 2009 KHDA's University Quality Assurance International Board (UQAIB) commended quality of university's programmes.

Middlesex University Dubai offers 24 undergraduate and 7 postgraduate programmes, as well as pre-undergraduate studies. All four of university's schools (Arts and Education, Business School, Engineering and Information Sciences and Health and Social Sciences) offer courses in Dubai campus. All degrees are issued by Middlesex University, UK. In 2008 Middlesex University Dubai awarded its first honorary doctorate to His Excellency Sultan Bin Sulayem. The number of graduates has grown from just 8 in 2006 to over 200 in 2009, while the alumni network has exceeded 1,000 in 2010. As of February 2011, Dubai campus had over 1,700 students from nearly 90 nationalities. In 2010, the campus expanded its facilities to include Block 17, which will house a state-of-the-art lecture theatre, several new classrooms and faculty offices as well as the first dedicated postgraduate study suite.

In an interview with Khaleej Times, Raed Awamleh, Dubai campus director, said that the university is aiming to start a whole set of programmes in 2012. Awamleh also mentioned a distant possibility of relocating to Dubai International Academic City.

Mauritius

Located in Bonne Terre, a suburb of Vacoas-Phoenix, the 7,800 sq metre campus officially opened in October 2009. It features a Learning Resource Centre, open access and computer suites, and dining and social spaces as well as on-site accommodation for up to 190 students. Lecturing academics based at the Mauritius campus work in partnership with the academic programme team based at Middlesex's London campuses to ensure the quality standards of the UK programmes are maintained in curriculum delivery, teaching styles and assessment.

Middlesex University shares its Mauritian campus with JSS Mahavidyapeetha (JSSMVP), an Indian educational institution. A future campus, scheduled to be completed by September 2017 at Cascavelle will eventually replace the existing campus. The 2.5 ha (25,000 m²) site will include modern facilities such as sports complex, leisure spaces and a green park.

Malta

In May 2013 Middlesex announced that it would open a campus in Malta, with students welcomed from September 2013. The campus, located in Pembroke on Malta's north-east coast, will offer business and computing courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Archway and Hospitals

The campus was closed in 2013, to help provide students with better facilities than those allowed by the old building at the Archway Campus. Archway and Hospitals campus was primarily the domain of the School of Health and Social Sciences. It operated from four sites (hospitals): Royal Free Hospital, Whittington Hospital (jointly owned with UCL), Chase Farm and North Middlesex.

On 24 January 2007 the university inaugurated a new Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) Mental Health and Social Work based at Archway campus. CETL status was bestowed on the Mental Health and Social Work Academic Group at the university in partnership with the Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health in 2005. Consequently, the Centre was awarded a capital grant of £1.4 million along with an annual revenue of £350,000 for five years, representing one of the largest ever funding initiatives by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). This funding enabled the university to establish new teaching facilities at its Archway campus with the aim of creating an academic community of mental health and social work practitioners, students and faculty in one location.

Subject focus: Nursing, midwifery, complementary health, sport science and social work.

Trent Park

Trent Park campus was closed in 2012 and all departments were moved to the main campus in Hendon. The campus was set within a 413-acre (1.67 km²) country park, which was originally a fourteenth-century hunting ground of Henry IV. The focus of the campus was a palatial mansion, designed by Sir William Chambers in the 18th century. After the Second World War, the Ministry of Education used the house as an emergency teacher training centre, which became a residential teacher training college, called Trent Park College of Education in 1951. In 1974 the college was incorporated into Middlesex Polytechnic.

In 2012 around 16% of Middlesex students were based at Trent Park campus. The university's Summer School, which accounts for 0.2% of Middlesex students, also took place here. The university had ambitious plans to redevelop the site, but they were twice rejected by Enfield Council on environmental concerns.

Subject focus: Dance, drama and performing arts, English language and literature, media, culture and communication, music, theatre arts, languages and translation studies, product design, Teaching and education. It was also home to the Flood Hazard Research Centre, which moved there when Enfield campus closed in July 2008. The Flood Hazard Research Centre is still part of Middlesex University but is now based at North London Business Park in New Southgate.

Tottenham

The campus was closed in summer 2005, its programmes of study having moved to the university's other campuses. What was the Tottenham campus started life as St Katharine's College, one of the first British teacher training colleges in 1878, later to become the College of All Saints, a Church of England college of higher education and a constituent college of the Institute of Education, University of London, for whose degrees it taught. The name change was a result of the 1964 union of St Katharine's with Berridge House, Hampstead, on the Tottenham site. The college expanded in the 1960s, although much of the campus retained its Victorian architecture. The College was highly regarded while part of London University, sadly its reputation suffered almost immediately once it was incorporated into Middlesex. After the closure of the college and the union with Middlesex Polytechnic, the 'All Saints' campus was home to humanities and cultural studies, business studies, law, sociology and women's studies, all of which have been moved to other campuses. The buildings, previously occupied by the university, were demolished and the site is now the home of the Haringey Sixth Form College. The College of All Saints Foundation continues as the All Saints Educational Trust.

Bounds Green

Bounds Green campus, home to the Engineering and Information Technology schools was sold to a residential developer in December 2003. It was used extensively for location shooting for the 1989 film, Wilt.

Enfield

The history of Enfield Campus began with the history of electric light. In 1901, Joseph Wilson Swan bought a house in Ponders End High Street that became the Ediswan Institute. Four years later Ediswan Institute was bought by Middlesex County Council and became the Ponders End Technical Institute. By 1937 The Ponders End Technical Institute was growing so rapidly that it was decided to build a new college across the road, in Queensway. Due to the Second World War, it was not completed until 1953, but the unfinished buildings were in use throughout the war. By now it was called Enfield Technical College, but in 1962 it was renamed Enfield College of Technology by the Ministry of Education. In 1973 the college formed part of Middlesex Polytechnic.

There are four major buildings on campus: Broadbent, Roberts building (or Tower Block), McCrae and Pascal. They are named after people who helped to create it.

Cat Hill

In March 2011 Cat Hill campus was sold to the L&Q housing association as part of the university's plans to centralise its courses in Hendon. The campus closed in September 2011 and students moved to a new £80 million 'Grove' building on the university's Hendon campus.

Cat Hill Campus was located in Cockfosters. It was originally the Hornsey College of Art, founded in 1880. In the late 1970s the campus was extended to become the Faculty of Art & Design of the then Middlesex Polytechnic. Today, art and design, cinematics and electronic arts are located at Cat Hill. The campus also houses the university's Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (MoDA) and formerly housed the national Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive until it relocated to the Bishopsgate Institute in central London. Cat Hill campus is also home to the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts (named after John Lansdown), which runs a variety of graduate and undergraduate degrees in interactive media and electronic arts.

Subject focus: Art & Design, fashion, textiles, fine art, graphics and media arts.

Chancellors

Vice-Chancellors

Schools

The university is divided into six schools and an Institute for Work Based Learning.

Art and Design

The school contains the Department of Visual Arts and the Department of Fashion and Interiors. Areas of study include animation, fine art, fashion, graphic design, illustration, photography, interior architecture and furniture. Teaching is now carried out in the Grove at Hendon, an £80m centre for creative courses, though Middlesex art and design began life as Hornsey College of Art, founded in 1880 – a British art institution, renowned for its experimental and progressive approach to art and design education.

Media and performing arts

Courses and research areas include theatre arts, music, dance, choreography, creative writing, film, 3D animation and games, television production, journalism, media studies, digital cultures, English and advertising and PR.

Courses are delivered in the Grove facility in Hendon, opened in 2011, which houses TV and radio studios alongside editing suites.

Business School

Middlesex University Business School (MUBS) is based at Hendon campus. It has run business studies qualifications since the 1950s at what was then Hendon College of Technology and offered the UK's first degree in business studies in 1965. It also launched its first MBA in the early 1980s. MUBS was one of only a handful of new universities in the UK accredited by Association of MBAs., before abandoning accreditation in 2010.

The university runs a small business school in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, offering two courses from the university in London. Since August 2011 they have been working with the Austrian "KMU Akademie" to offer German MBA-Programmes.

Middlesex MBA ranked amongst the global top 200 programmes by Quacquarelli Symonds and took 53rd place in Europe.

Science and Technology

The School of Science and Technology is one of the largest in the UK, having trebled in size since 1994, with more than 1000 students from a rich diversity of backgrounds, ages and countries. Study areas include Computer and Communications Engineering, Computer Science, Design Engineering and Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Teaching is located at Hendon campus in North London. Middlesex University validates degrees in homeopathy.

Law

The school offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Law, Criminology, Sociology, Politics, Development, Environmental Governance and International Relations.

The European Human Rights Advocacy Centre (EHRAC) joined the university in 2013 and is part of the School of Law.

Health and education

The School of Health and Education offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in education and teaching, health, social work, psychology, and sports and exercise science.

Institute for Work Based Learning

The Institute for Work Based Learning (or IWBL) pioneered the development of Work Based Learning at higher education level during the early 1990s. It grew out of Work Based Learning Research and Development Project, which was initially funded by the Department for Education and Employment over 1992–1994. This established Work Based Learning as a field of study in which higher education qualifications could be awarded.

Later, in 1993, The National Centre for Work Based Learning Partnerships (or NCWBLP) was founded and two years later – in 1995 – the first Work Based Learning Studies programmes were validated. In 1998 the university launched its transdisciplinary Doctorate in Professional Studies (DProf), which now represents over a third of all the university's doctoral level programmes with around 300 candidates.

In 2005 Middlesex University was recognised as a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning for Work Based Learning by the Higher Education Academy and HEFCE awarded the university a grant of £3.5 million to share their expertise with the wider higher education sector.

In 2008 HEFCE awarded Middlesex University with a grant of almost £8 million to support employer engagement. The funding allowed the university to establish the Middlesex University Organisational Development Network (or MODNet), a centre of a national network of expertise in work-based learning. MODNet offers learning and development programmes co-designed with employers and acts as a 'one-stop shop', able to respond to all employer training needs, drawing on partner expertise where appropriate.

In December 2011 the Government's Higher Apprenticeships Fund awarded the institute nearly £1.5m to develop Higher Level Apprenticeships in the construction industry. As one of only two Universities to lead Higher Apprenticeship projects, Middlesex has to date developed work-based higher education programmes for four Higher Apprenticeship frameworks and has worked in construction, care management, retail management and aviation sectors.

Today the university runs Work Based Learning Centres in Athens, Ireland, Hong Kong and Malaysia and has received Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education for its role in integrating formal education and employment.

Research

Research covers 29 areas. The UK Funding Councils' 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) rated 58% of research submitted to be world and internationally excellent.

In 2011 the university's research project on age diversity was selected for inclusion in the Research Councils' "Big Ideas for the Future" report. The report brings together the leading research projects currently taking place across UK universities.

Student life

The university has a student body of around 21,000, many of whom are older students. Around 4,800 students (23%) are from overseas, with about 4000 (16%) from outside the European Union. The university has student exchange links with over 100 universities in 22 countries across Europe, the United States, and the world.

Until recently the number of students at the university has been declining fast, hitting a four-year low of 21,350 in the academic year of 2008–2009. The number of PG students fell 20% in four years (from over 6,000 graduates in 2005 to less than 5,000 in 2009), while the number of non-EU students were down by a third over the same period. In the academic year of 2009–2010, however, the number of students across all categories increased sharply. The trend continued the following year with particularly high increase in the number of students from the EU.

In 2010 Middlesex had one of the biggest increases in applications at any university – more than 30% – but the demand for places had still grown by another 11% at the start of 2011.

Students' Union

Middlesex Students' Union (MDXSU) is a non-profit organisation, separate to the university, which acts as the voice of students at Middlesex and supports them throughout their studies. The Students' Union provides social and skill-building opportunities through societies, events, volunteering and the student run media. The latter, POW! Media, includes a termly magazine, radio station, TV channel and online blog showcasing student content.

As a democratic organisation, MDXSU is led by four Student Officers who are elected each spring by students at Middlesex. The officer positions are the President, the Vice-President Health & Education and Science & Technology, the Vice-President Art & Design and Media & Performing Arts, and the Vice-President Business and Law. The Student Officers cover all aspects of student life – from sports and volunteering to accommodation and welfare – while the Vice-Presidents are also responsible for representing the students within their schools.

To help ensure that the Students' Union is properly representing and supporting students, MDXSU established the Student Voice Leader scheme in 2013. These students are elected for each year of each course, and are responsible for taking feedback from their coursemates to lecturers and university staff, helping to create changes that students want to see.

In 1981 Union president Nick Harvey joined protests outside Rochester Row police station after six Irish students were detained without charge under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. That year student John Kennedy stood in the Crosby by-election to highlight the case of seven students suspended from the Polytechnic after a sit-in protest demanding nursery facilities.

Reputation and rankings

The university has been awarded the Queen's Anniversary Prize three times and has twice received Queen's Award for Enterprise (for its international work).

A team of auditors from the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) visited Middlesex from 30 March to 3 April 2009 to carry out an Institutional audit. Its resulting report said auditors had confidence in the university's current and likely future management of its academic standards and of the learning opportunities available to students. There was also praise for the 'meticulous attention' given to the establishment, development and integration of the university's Dubai campus. Middlesex also received QAA praise for its initiatives to improve student progression and achievement and the 'distinctive contribution' of the university's Work Based Learning programmes.

In 2006, the university was ranked second in a re-assessment of teaching quality in all English universities. The Times Higher Education Supplement of 17 November 2006 reported on how the scores for each university, as marked by the Quality Assurance Agency, had been "adjusted to remove the link with research" and form a league table which had post-1992 universities performing strongly.

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) ranks the university Business School the 209th international business schools in the world.

Middlesex University Business School is rated as a "centre of excellence" by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), the first university in the UK to offer courses accredited by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

The university is home to two HEFCE 'Centres for Excellence in Learning and Teaching' – one in Work Based Learning – one in Mental Health and Social Work.

The overall satisfaction rating from the National Student Survey (or NSS) increased from 77% in 2011/12 to 82% in 2012/13.

Students joining ISIS

Two students from the university have been convicted of joining ISIS. In 2015 Yahya Rashid was convicted of terrorism charges and sentenced to 5 years in prison. Rashid who forged his BTEC certificates was allowed to study at Middlesex. He traveled to Syria to fight but shortly afterwards returned back to the UK.

In 2016 Cubeyda Jama was arrested on a plane before take off at Stansted Airport bound for Romania with plans to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS. He was also convicted of terrorism charges and was sentenced for three and a half years.

Juan Augusto

Prof Juan Augusto is a Computer Science professor currently employed at Middlesex University. In 2016 he was given a suspended given three-month prison term due to pleading guilty to a charge of assaulting his wife occasioning her actual bodily harm. A bench warrant was issued after Augusto failed to turn up in court at an earlier court hearing.

Notable alumni

Middlesex runs an alumni association allowing former students to maintain contact with the university after graduation. It offers discounts and benefits to members and organises reunions and social events.

Although not a graduate, Tommy Flowers, a British engineer who helped create the Colossus computer used to break code during World War II received a basic computing certificate from Hendon College.

School of Art and Design

School of Media and Performing Arts

Business School

School of Science and Technology

School of Health and education