Bucks rated Number One in the UK for Facilities Spend per Student

Number One for spend per student

Bucks New University is now rated Number One for facilities spending to support our students, according to The Complete University Guide. Why are we number one? Chances are, it's because of the very significant investment made in the state-of-the-art media hub that was built here just a couple of years ago.

The Gateway Building at Bucks has some of the best media facilities I have ever seen at a university, and I have taught at many schools and universities around the world, including CalArts, Gnomon, The University of the Arts at Bournemouth, The University of Kent at Canterbury, and the Animation Workshop in Denmark. All of them are excellent places to teach and study, but none have facilities that come close to being as impressive as the ones we have at Bucks. So what do we have to offer our media students?

Gateway - our new Media Hub, packed with facilities

To get the full picture, you need to come by and take a tour of our facilities. But, in brief, here's a summary of what's available.

free laptops for all our freshmen students

1. State-of-the-art computers and animation labs. We're proud of our facilities, which are open to our students most days, evenings and weekends. To see a tour of our animation rooms, click here.
2. A free laptop for all our freshmen. Seriously? A free laptop? Yes - we really mean it! For all our new students starting this September. This way you can work from home, and have the flexibility to customise your own workstation.
3. Free access to training videos at Lynda.com. Teach yourself pretty much any piece of software you need.
4. Green Screen facilities, and the latest camera equipment. So you can shoot live action as well as do animation.  To take a tour, click here.
5. Recording studios, to record music and voice-overs, mix sound, and do sound design work
6. A Media Resources centre where you can check out and borrow all kinds of sophisticated equipment at no charge. 
7. Motion capture facilities - we're still working on getting this up and running but we're almost there.
8. Actors, dancers, singers, musicians....you get the picture.

The reality is that Bucks teaches pretty much every aspect of creative media that you can think of. Which brings a huge range of opportunities to collaborate across course disciplines. Today, Bucks is one of the most creative universities in the UK. There is a reason why we were ranked by The Daily telegraph as one of the top 14 creative places to study here in Britain.

The best thing about Bucks is the sheer amount of creative work being done across all disciplines. As a lecturer and tutor, part of my job is encourage the animation students to seek out talent in other disciplines. Almost all great work done in our medium is a collaboration of one kind or another. Here at Uni you will find the people you like to work with. Who knows? You might even found a company together!

---Alex

For more about the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work

What is Student Number Control?

How it used to be

Student Number Control is the system by which the Government regulates how many students each university in the UK can welcome through its doors. In effect, every university has a quota, which it cannot exceed, and that quota is dictated by the Government. The purpose of the system is to control student numbers, and distribute students geographically throughout the country, ensuring that a handful of super universities don't soak up all the talent.

The system has been in place for many years, but - and this is the important bit - it is about to end. From 2015, Student Number Control will be gone. The announcement that Student Number Control will end was made in the 2013 Autumn statement by Chancellor George Osborne. So what does it all mean? The answer is - big changes are ahead for universities across the country.

It's all George's fault

How the system works now
Right now, the government funds a fixed number of places at each university by lending students the money to cover their fees. The system is run by The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and there is not much flexibility in these quotas.

The only exception to the quota system is this: universities are currently free to accept as many top-performing applicants as they wish - ie applicants who get better than ABB at A Level. If universities exceed the number of students they recruit with grades lower than ABB, they get fined.

HEFCE - running the show

How the system will change
From 2015, each university can take as many students as it likes. The quota system will be scrapped entirely. No limits, no quotas - and no fines.

First, the good news
The good news is that, in effect, there will be many more places at University, potentially throwing higher education open to tens of thousands of extra students. According to the Chancellor - up to 30,000 extra students. So what this means is, potentially, a further large expansion of higher education in the UK.

It also means that universities which are very good at what they do, and are heavily over-subscribed, will be free to expand their numbers. And new universities that you haven't even heard of yet will be tempted to start up new courses.

The bad news
The bad news is that universities which have traditionally struggled to fill their quotas will be struggling even more. Expansion at the top means contraction at the bottom, so any university course which isn't already popular and performing at a high level will be under pressure.

Adam Smith would approve

Does this amount to privatisation of higher education?
In a way, yes. It certainly is an extension of free market principles to higher education, which has traditionally been heavily protected from the chilly winds of the market. If you are a follower of Adam Smith, you will probably rejoice. If you're in Karl Marx's team - it looks like bad news.

What does this mean for animation at Bucks?
For universities all across the country, all this means big changes. Under subscribed courses will likely have to close down or re-invent themselves. Popular, successful courses will likely expand and thrive. Some universities will likely face the threat of shrinkage, being taken over, or possibly even closure.

Gateway - our shiny new media hub

Take a look at The Times and The Guardian university league tables, and Bucks doesn't do well. But, focus on the creative arts, especially media production, and we do much, much better. The £40m investment in 2007 in the Gateway building (above) has paid off, with huge growth in media courses like Performance, Film and TV, Sound Design, Music Management and (of course!) Animation and Visual Effects.

The Gateway building is one of the best things about Bucks. The opportunity for our students to collaborate with other departments, exploring film-making across other disciplines, is huge, and it is unique. Any university can offer an animation course. Not many can offer the range of collaborations that Bucks can.

Sound design at Bucks

Our goal is to be the best animation and visual effects course in the country. For us, the ending of Student Number Control is an opportunity to grow our course and become the UK leader that we want to be.

That's a big ambition. Ask me in three years if we have pulled it off or not.

---Alex

(Editor's note: For more on collaborations between departments at Bucks, read this piece on Sound Design.  For more on the Bucks Media Collaborations Page, see this article. To find out more about how to work successfully on group projects, check out this piece. )

The Daily Telegraph ranks Bucks in top 14 Creative Universities

Art and Industry - what Bucks is all about

Recently the online magazine Huffington Post ranked Bucks in the top 12 Creative Universities in the UK. Now the Telegraph has weighed in, including us in a list of the 14 most creative universities in the UK.  So why are we in this list? The answer lies in the massive £40million investment made a few years ago in our shiny new Gateway media building - an investment that is now beginning to pay off handsomely.

According to The Telegraph, the list was compiled by the consumer group Which?, who asked more than 16,000 students in the UK tell them if music, theatre, dance, choirs and the visual arts played a large part in university life.

The results came from two separate surveys. One was conducted this past summer and one was done in 2012. There is no order to the rankings. We're not number 14 - we are among the 14.

Gateway Building - opened in 2010

 

I have never taught at a University that had better facilities for making media than we have here at Bucks. Our animation students collaborate with sound designers, dancers, actors, musicians, live action film-makers and - ready to go live in early 2014 - a new motion capture facility. We're even trying to figure out ways of collaborating the fashion students. I don't know quite how yet - but we'll figure it out.

All great film-makers are collaborators, and almost every successful media project that any of us work on will be a collaboration of one kind or another. Look at any great director or film-maker and you will find a hugely talented team standing behind them.

There are many ways that or students collaborate. One of them is the Bucks Media Collaborations page at Facebook, which brings different departments together to collaborate on their projects.

To take a look for yourself at what we offer at Bucks, drop in to one of our open days. In fact, we have one tomorrow, from 5.30pm to 9pm. More details here.

----Alex

(Editor's note: for more on collaborations between departments, check out this piece on the super-useful Bucks Media Collaborations page. To take a virtual tour of some of our excellent facilities, read this article.  And to see how serious we are about making sure our students are technically proficient, find out about why we're giving away free laptops to our new students.)

Bucks ranked in top 12 among "Creative Universities" in the UK by Huffington Post

Gateway media hub - opened in 2010

One of the best things about teaching at Bucks New University is the huge range of media disciplines that are gathered around our High Wycombe campus. In recent years Bucks has been re-inventing itself as a major creative hub, following the huge £40million investment in the Gateway media building that houses a wide variety of creative arts. That investment is now beginning to pay off, and recently the Huffington Post recognised this by ranking us number 12 among creative universities in the UK.

This is very welcome news for everyone at Bucks. In traditional university terms, Bucks does not score high on the lists. We don't do much research, and we lack the prestige of the ancient universities. However, despite our name, our institution goes back in one form or another to the late 19th century. Founded in 1893 as the School of Science and Art, the original motto was "arte et industria", which doesn't need much translating, even if you skipped Latin at school.

Over a century on, that's still what we do. Animation and Visual Effects is a perfect example - a blend of art and industry, or, rather, art and computer science - which is much the same thing.

How it used to be at Bucks. And, in a way, still is.

I have taught animation at many schools and universities around the world. But I have never taught at a University that had better facilities for making media than we have here at Bucks. Film, TV, acting and performance, Green Screen, Live Events, Sound Design - we have talented students in every department. Check out the Bucks Media Collaborations page at Facebook, which brings these departments together to collaborate on great projects.

For anyone doing creative media at Bucks, things are getting better all the time. So it is great news that the world is starting to notice.

----Alex

(Editor's note: for more on collaborations between departments, check out this piece on the Bucks Media Collaborations page. To take a virtual tour of some of our excellent facilities, read this article.  And to see how serious we are about making sure our students are technically proficient, find out about why we're giving away free laptops to our new students.)