Middlesex University

History

For 140 years, the institutions which eventually formed Middlesex University have been based in north London. The university grew out of mergers between different schools and colleges in the area beginning in 1878 when St. Katherine's College, a female teacher training college, was created in Tottenham. It was joined by Hornsey College of Art, founded in 1882, Ponders End Technical Institute, founded in 1901, and Hendon Technical Institute, opened in 1939.

In 1973, these colleges and further institutions around north London formed Middlesex Polytechnic. In 1992 Middlesex University was established from Middlesex Polytechnic by royal assent as part of the Further and Higher Education Act. More institutions joined at this time as Middlesex expanded further.

From the 1990s, the university began to develop its international presence with their first overseas regional office in Kuala Lumpur. In 1995, a network of regional offices opened across Europe. In 2005, Middlesex opened its first overseas campus in Dubai followed by a campuses in Mauritius in 2009 and Malta in 2013. The university also has partnerships with other educational institutions around the world.

The university has now consolidated its many London campuses into one Hendon campus where it now accommodates all its London-based teaching.

Timeline

1878 – St Katherine's College, Tottenham founded

1882 – Hornsey College of Art founded

1893 – Berridge House, Hampstead founded

1901 – Ponders End Technical Institute begins

1939 – Hendon Technical Institute opens

1947 – Trent Park College of Education opens

1962 – New College of Speech and Drama opens

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 cuts 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

The university has consolidated most of its activities onto the Hendon campus in London with all teaching 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.

Current campuses

The Hendon campus is located in north-west London, near Hendon Central Underground station. Its main College Building was built in the neo-Georgian style by H.W. Burchett and opened in 1939 as part of Hendon Technical Institute. This was extended in 1955 and in 1969 when a new refectory and engineering block were added, and later expanded using a number of London Borough of Barnet office buildings including the current Town Hall and Library.

Over £200m has been invested to transform the university's Hendon site into one of London's biggest campuses. The main College Building was 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 to offer 24/7 access to over 1,000 study areas and specialist facilities including a Financial Markets Suite, Law Wing, and Teaching Resources Room.

The Ritterman Building is one of Middlesex University's newest developments, and was opened in February 2017. It provides over 3,300 square metres of additional teaching space for both the Faculty of Science and Technology, and the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, and is home to the UK's first 'Cyber Factory'. Its design incorporates sustainable technologies including solar panels, a bio-diverse green roof, and living walls irrigated by rainwater harvesting.

Other specialist facilities include bioscience and biomedical science laboratories, nursing and midwifery simulation labs.

The Hendon campus has a number of sports facilities, including a fitness studio, 7-a-side football pitches, floodlit outdoor courts (MACS), a bouldering wall, and one of the few real tennis courts in the UK. In October 2013, the university opened a new sports science facility at Allianz Park (the new stadium of Saracens Rugby Club) in Hendon. The refurbished university gym, Fitness Pod, opened in 2017 to offer gym and leisure facilities to students, staff and the local community.

In 2005, the university opened a campus in the Dubai Knowledge Village as part of Dubai's Technology and Media Free Zone. This is a joint venture with Middlesex Associates, a business consortium in Dubai. The campus was the first Middlesex campus outside north London. It provides courses in Accounting and Finance, Business and Management, Computing and IT, Education, Law and Politics, Marketing, Media and Communications, Psychology, Social Science and International Tourism Management.

Former campuses

In 2013 Middlesex opened its newest campus in Malta in Pembroke on Malta's northeast coast. The campus is shared with academic partner STC Training and offers a variety of business and science and technology courses at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, including top-up and postgraduate courses in Computing, IT and business.

In February 2019, it was announced that the Malta campus will close by September 2022.

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 (Archway Wing) (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 focuses: Nursing, midwifery, complementary health, sport science and social work.

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.

Organisation and governance

Faculties

The university is divided into three faculties:

Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries

The Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries is home to the Departments of Media, Performing Arts, Design and Visual Arts.

Faculty of Professional and Social Sciences

The Faculty of Professional and Social Sciences groups subjects from the Business School, Institute for Work Based Learning, School of Law, and School of Health and Education.

Faculty of Science and Technology

The Faculty of Science and Technology brings together subjects including biomedical science, computer science, design engineering, telecommunications and computer engineering, mathematics and statistics, information systems and environmental science. The Faculty is home to the Departments of Natural Sciences, Computer Science, Design Engineering and Mathematics, Psychology, and the London Sports Institute.

Governance

Middlesex has both a Board of Governors and an Executive Team, both of which are led by Vice-Chancellor, Tim Blackman.

Chancellors

1992–2000 – Beryl Platt, Baroness Platt of Writtle

2000–2013 – Allen Sheppard, Baron Sheppard of Didgemere

2013–present – Janet Ritterman

Vice-Chancellors

1972–1991 – Raymond Rickett (academic)

1992–1996 – David Melville

1992–2015 – Michael Driscoll

2015–2019 – Tim Blackman

2019-2023 - Nic Beech

2023-2024 - Sean Wellington (Interim)

2024–present - Shân Wareing

Tim Blackman announced his resignation in May 2019 to take the role of Vice-Chancellor at the Open University.

Research

Middlesex's research covers a wide spectrum of subjects across its three faculties including Art and Design, Education, Human, Social and Economic Geography, Law, Music, Professional Practice, Software Engineering and Algorithms.

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

The UK Funding Councils' 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) rated 90% of Middlesex's research internationally recognised.

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 19,000, in London and over 37,000 globally. 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.

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

In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2018, Middlesex University was the only modern university in London to feature in the top 500 global universities. In the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2017, Middlesex was named the top modern university in London. In the Guardian University Guide 2018, the university's Film Production and Photography course was named the top in London. In The Complete University Guide 2018, its Sports Science and Social Work courses were named the best in London. In 2017/18 the overall satisfaction from the National Student Survey was 77%.

Middlesex is ranked within the top 401–500 universities in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and one of the top 100 universities in the world under 50 years old by the Times Higher Education Young University Rankings 2020.

In 2017, Middlesex was recognised for its high-quality teaching in the government's Teaching Excellence Framework. The institute was awarded Silver and commended for valuing and rewarding teaching, as well as enhancing student engagement.

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).

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

In 2020 Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked Middlesex's psychology degrees in the top 201–250 psychology degrees in the world.

In 2022, 2023 and 2024 ARWU ranked Middlesex's psychology degrees in the top 301–400 psychology degrees in the world.

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.