Research projects: The University’s research activity linked to health and wellbeing are shared on our website.
SDG 4 - Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Bucks New University has a proud history of offering employment-focused and skills-based learning and removing barriers to participation in higher education. We are committed to ensuring that our graduates are well-prepared and confident in rising to the challenges of the highly competitive employment market. Boosting future employability is a key focus for Bucks students’ from their very first days with us. Our Impact 2022 strategy builds on our historic mission to transform lives through inspiring, employment- and profession-focused education, enabling people positively to impact society and their future. It calls for us to assess the value of our work through the University’s impact on students, staff, stakeholders, communities and strategic partners. Our vision is for Buckinghamshire New University to become a University that is highly connected, permeable, student- and customer-focused, business-oriented, strategically aligned, impactful and aligned to strategic partners. We will provide an education that works for all regardless of background or circumstance; provides students with skills for life, able to meet the global challenges of the 21st Century; and is ethical and sustainable, from a University that always meets its social responsibilities, to students, to staff, and to society.
Our commitment to widening participation in higher education We are proud to attract a highly diverse student intake and are significantly above the sector average in our numbers of mature and Black (23.3%), Asian (17.8%) and mixed ethnicity (4.1%) students. The diversity in our student body reflects our longstanding and highly successful work to reach out to underrepresented groups in higher education; to provide an environment and form of education that meets their needs; and to support them into high levels of graduate employment. Compared to the UK higher education sector, Bucks has non-significant attainment gaps between different ethnic groups; there are no gaps for those with a declared disability; and no significant gap for those students from the most deprived quintiles. While in 2018-19, the sector attainment gap between white and black students was 22pp, at Bucks it was 8pp and reducing significantly year on year. When it comes to graduate employment rates, no significant gaps are seen between different ethnic groups, for those with disabilities, or for students from different deprivation quintiles. Building on our success, and consistent with our mission, we are developing our widening participation work still further in order to pioneer routes into higher education for the hardest-toreach communities. Buckinghamshire New University’s 2020-24 Access and Participation Plan was approved by the UK Government’s Director for Fair Access and Participation (Office for Students) in November 2019. It includes our ambitions to improve equality of opportunity for all students to access, succeed in and progress from higher education, what we plan to do to achieve that ambition, the targets we have set, and the investment we will make to deliver the plan.
We will develop our position as an innovative, teaching-oriented University, delivering sectorleading and life-changing educational and employment outcomes for our students.
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Our education will be flexible, inclusive, enquirybased and employer-informed, and designed around the needs of our students. We will deliver research and innovation that impacts and enhances lives and society and underpins our educational offer. We will be an outwardly-focused institution, entrepreneurial in spirit, meeting our ethical and social responsibilities, expanding our reach through.
