Comment: Jo Johnson MP champions The Dyson Institute’s innovative approach to higher education
Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation:
‘The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology is a genuine and compelling alternative to a traditional degree.
It will help us tackle the chronic shortage of engineers that has long held us back as an economy. This will contribute to the re-tooling and upgrading of the UK’s skills base, which is so pivotal to this Government’s industrial strategy.
If the UK is to succeed as a knowledge economy, we cannot stand still — nor can we take for granted our universities’ enviable global reputation. We must ensure that our higher education system is fulfilling its potential and delivering the best possible value for students, for employers, and for the taxpayers that underwrite it.
On taking office in 2015, I was deeply concerned by the barriers faced by organisations wishing to enter the higher education sector. It was incomprehensible to me that the system should be geared up to actively prevent new providers from meeting the demand for more and different ways of learning, which our young people so clearly crave.
And so I drafted the Higher Education and Research Bill: a piece of legislation that, for the first time, offers high quality institutions a direct route to degree awarding powers and university status, in their own right.
“Few organisations embody the spirit of great British invention quite like Dyson.”
Not only is it a global success story, but in its 25 year history it has promoted great engineering right here in Britain. So it should have come as no surprise to me that James immediately saw the opportunity offered by the new legislation, and wasted no time in setting wheels in motion!
The Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology is a genuine and compelling alternative to a traditional degree.
It will help us tackle the chronic shortage of engineers that has long held Britain back as an economy. This will contribute to the re-tooling and upgrading of the UK’s skills base, which is so pivotal to this Government’s industrial strategy.
And most significantly, it will trail blaze a new approach to higher education, paving the way for others to follow — giving students a wider choice of quality, flexible, affordable options.’
This piece was originally published in On: Spaces, Dyson’s in-house magazine published eight times a year. Jo Johnson attended the turf cutting ceremony at The Dyson Institute’s new Malmesbury campus on 28th November 2018.
