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Bath Spa University

NATIONAL
RANK

71%

FIRSTS
2:1s

87.3%

COMPLETION
RATE

Key Stats

n/a

TEACHING
QUALITY

42nd=

STUDENT
EXPERIENCE

84th=

RESEARCH
QUALITY

104th

GRADUATE
PROSPECTS

Contact details

ADDRESS

Newton Park,
Newton St Loe, Bath, BA2 9BN View on map >

Telephone

01225 875 875

enquiries@bathspa.ac.uk

Website

www.bathspa.ac.uk

Open days

Newton Park - October 18 (music and performing arts); October 25 and November 8 (except art and design students). Sion Hill - October 25, November 8 and 18, December 2 and 6 (art and design only)

University Profile

The opening in June of the new Bath Spa Learning Commons building on the main Newton Park campus marked a giant leap forward in the quality of facilities at Bath Spa. Containing 1,800 square metres of technology-enabled flexible study space and digital facilities for teaching media-related courses that the university claims are the best in the southwest, the building is part of a £70m reboot of Newton Park that also includes soon-to-be-completed residences for more than 560 students. The new development is at the heart of Bath Spa’s focus on creativity, culture and enterprise. It is hoping to build a greater international profile – and recruit up to 15% of its students from abroad – through a series of initiatives. The university has helped to found the Global Academy of Liberal Arts (Gala), bringing together a number of universities from around the world. It has also established Bath Spa Global, which will see the first 60 students admitted to a new International First Year in 2014. The programme will provide additional support to help international students to integrate within the UK education system before they progress to full degree

programmes. They will receive language tuition, academic instruction and information on UK history and culture, as well as the opportunity to become involved in local community projects. There will also be a Bath Spa Global School of Business and Entrepreneurship, offering one of the few degree programmes in Europe to combine design thinking with global business, entrepreneurship and creativity. All students can collect a Global Citizenship award by completing a module that covers a range of cross-cutting issues with relevance to all subjects in the arts, humanities and sciences. There are four-year Integrated Masters courses in a number of creative subjects – a relatively unusual model in the arts and humanities, but one that offers advantages to students in terms of funding and progression opportunities. Bath Spa is building a reputation for expertise in the field of Creative Computing, with several new courses coming online, ranging from software development to gaming, and a growing number of PhD students are joining the new Centre for Creative Computing. Bath Spa is one of the higher ranking modern universities – it gained university title in 2005, although it’s history goes back 160 years – achieving consistently good scores in the annual National Student Survey (NSS) and with a low dropout rate, this year’s 8.2% figure well below the expected level of around 9.6%. Students particularly praise Bath Spa’s teaching quality in the NSS. The word is clearly out as Bath Spa is currently enjoying an increase in undergraduate applications above the national average. The university’s Newton Park headquarters, four miles outside the World Heritage city of Bath, is in grounds landscaped by Capability Brown in the 18th century, with a handsome Georgian manor house owned by the Duchy of Cornwall as its centrepiece. Newton Park is the base for all students except those taking art and design subjects, and provides a study environment where historic buildings – such as the scheduled ancient monument gatehouse from the 14th century that is home to the Creative Writing Centre – blend sympathetically with modern facilities. A second campus at Sion Hill, in Bath itself, houses the Bath School of Art and Design. It has recently undergone a £6m makeover and boasts facilities that are among the most modern in the country. The university also has a postgraduate centre at Corsham Court, a 16th-century manor house near Chippenham, and is establishing the specialist Bath Spa Institute for Education at Hartham Park in Corsham, offering a range education study and research opportunities. About a third of the students are postgraduates, including a large cohort training to be teachers. Half of the subjects in which the university entered the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (art and design, communication, cultural and media studies, English, history and music) were judged to have some world-leading work. The appointment of some high profile professors (such as Fay Weldon and Gavin Turk) has strengthened the university’s profile for both research and teaching in key areas such as creative writing and art and design. Despite a setting that would seem to be a magnet for applicants from independent schools, almost 95% of the home intake is state-educated and just under 40% are from working-class homes. Two-thirds of the students are female, reflecting the arts and social science bias in the curriculum and a quarter are over 25. Currently about 90% of first years who are eligible for university accommodation are offered places, but with the new student village at Newton Park about to open, it will be possible for a higher percentage of students across all years to be housed. Sports facilities are not extensive, but a new gym in the students’ union has improved them, and some of the university’s sports teams do well in local competitions.

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PERFORMANCE