10 reasons to choose BU

A number of recent achievements and accolades illustrate BU’s status as an innovative, international institution offering high quality education, research, enterprise and professional practice.

1. BU has increased its ranking in all four major UK league tables over the last year (2009-2010) and is ranked as the UK’s number one new University in The Guardian University Guide for 2009 and 2010;

2. BU emerged as the fourth most improved UK university in terms of research quality following the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) for 2008. Of the ten areas assessed, eight featured research that was rated as being of world leading quality in terms of its originality, significance and rigour;

3. BU was awarded the highest category of confidence in the maintenance of its academic standards and the enhancement of its quality by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in December 2008;

4. BU won a £6M research grant, our largest ever, from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Centre (EPSRC) to establish an Industrial Doctorate Centre in Computer Animation with the University of Bath.;

5. BU has completed a multi-million pound investment in a new Executive Business Centre on our Lansdowne Campus. The building will become a focal point for the local business community and an ideas exchange for the region. It will also host the Business School’s postgraduate portfolio, including our new flagship programme, the Bournemouth MBA;

6. BU has appointed approximately 150 academics over the last three years to facilitate the transition of its staff profile from ‘teachers’ to ‘academics’ and foster the development of an academically led culture;

7. During the first half of 2009, three of our leading Professors, Matthew Bennett on hominin footprints, Ralph Clarke on the reintroduction to the UK of the Large Blue butterfly and Adrian Newton on environmental restoration became the first from BU to co-author landmark papers published in Science, one of the world’s highest rated publications for research. Matthew Bennett’s paper appeared on the cover of Science.;

8. BU received the ‘Outstanding Library Team’ award at the inaugural Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards in 2009 recognising the team’s high quality of service to all areas of University activity;

9. BU has one of the highest graduate employability rates in the UK with 95% of our graduates proceeding to employment within 6 months of completing study. 75% were in graduate jobs or further study within 6 months, a figure comparable with the best in the sector.;

10. BU has recently invested £1.5 million in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to develop several major student-facing systems including online enrolments and payments.