By New £30m Peterborough university launched
A new £30m university for Peterborough was officially launched today (Tuesday, July 14).
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) was announced as the official higher education partner for a new employment-focused university in the city.
ARU will deliver the curriculum for the new university, which will be known as ARU Peterborough, until 2028, and will soon begin recruiting its first cohort of students.
The new £30-million university is set to open its doors to 2,000 students in 2022, with an ambition to offer courses for up to 12,500 by 2030.
The curriculum will be designed to meet local economic needs; providing both opportunities for local residents to receive a top-class vocational education and a well skilled local workforce for businesses to employ.
ARU Peterborough will deliver a practical solution to the acute shortage of degree-level employees in the workforce, with Peterborough ranked in the bottom 10% in the UK for skills levels.
Courses will be delivered through a mixture of on-campus lessons, in-work training, and apprenticeships, with distance learning and outreach programmes to improve accessibility and widen participation.
James Palmer, the Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority, has been working closely with partners and key stakeholders for the past three years in planning the new university, an ambition of the city for more than 20 years.
He said: “After decades of false starts, I am beyond pleased to be officially launching a new employment focused university for Peterborough, which will drastically improve the life chances of people in Peterborough and the surrounding area.
“The university will breathe new life into the city and region, helping to empower people with the skills and training they need to find jobs and careers that will be fulfilling and rewarding and in turn creating a new generation of highly skilled workers to meet the needs of emerging markets.”
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