Newcastle College University Centre is the first College based Higher Education provider to be awarded indefinite taught degree awarding powers in the UK. Something like 95% of our graduates come from a 50 mile radius of NCUC and unlike other universities or graduates stay local and enter the engineering industry within the North East. To ensure that our students are more able to be effective early on in their careers we are changing the way we teach to a more ‘learning by doing’ approach rather than a traditional academic approach, and this is to ensure that people leaving our courses are able to apply their learning in an engineering environment and solve one of those problems manufacturers face – how to recruit good people in sufficient numbers.

This approach perhaps differentiates us from other universities, and we hope that applied engineering will enable our graduates to contribute to engineering business, and experience the joy of working in an environment where they can spend decades ‘solving problems’ which is what an engineer really does.

The journey that we are on has just begun, but changing our lectures to seminars, focussing on practical application of theory, developing digital skills which are seen as a particular problem for industry, and giving graduates the confidence to apply them is our focus going forward so we can support their progression into high quality jobs, and support employers recruiting people who can quickly become effective.