Northumbria reveals the secrets of its success

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

When Northumbria University's Newcastle Business School picked up the top business education prize at the Times Higher Education Awards last November, it was the culmination of an eight-year journey that saw the institution almost entirely reinvent itself.

Small wonder that the award means a lot to Executive Dean Professor Kevin Kerrigan and the business school as a whole. “This is the Oscar of the HE world,” says Kerrigan. “It's a real boost to our profile and sends a strong message about the quality of the work we're doing.”

To get to the top of the pile the school focused on securing accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International) and is now the only business school in Europe (and one of only 10 in the world outside the US) to be AACSB-accredited in both Business and Accounting. According to Kerrigan the process fundamentally changed the school's approach to business education.

“For example, the AACSB requires high levels of doctoral qualifications within the academic staff,” he says. A training and recruitment drive saw the number of teaching staff holding doctoral qualifications leap from 20 to 70 per cent. “What that means is that the staff are much more research active, internationally aware and capable of producing excellent work.”

Successful accreditation also demands relevant, professional programmes that demonstrably produce employable graduates. At NBS that includes an entrepreneurial business degree where students run their own limited companies; and offering a student business consultancy clinic, which sees students offer free advice to more than 50 local SMEs, charities and local authorities.

These innovations led to both graduate prospects and average salaries increasing. They succeed by placing students in an authentic business environment, says Kerrigan. “Students won't be buried in a book for three or four years. They'll be engaged with real world learning, meeting and serving professional clients and building employability skills.”

The results of the clinic are also clear in both student feedback and grades. “Many of our students love it,” says Kerrigan. “Students taking part get an average mark of 72 per cent, which shows that if you challenge them to be professional, they really engage with the experience.”

This close integration of theory and practice lies at the heart of the NBS success story, says Kerrigan. “Take those things in isolation and you have an incomplete picture; combine them, and you get a much more holistic experience and students who can really make a difference to the workplaces they enter,” he adds.

Next on the agenda? Further accreditation (the school's MBA programme is eyeing the Association of MBAs), a greater postgrad provision and more international partnerships. “The challenge is to go further and to meet the needs and expectations of our students, academic colleagues and partners,” Kerrigan concludes. “What they can expect from us is continual innovation and creativity.”