Principal: We are playing key role in college renaissance
SCOTLAND’S newest college is playing a leading role in a “renaissance” in higher education with a focus on technical and professional skills, its founding principal and chief executive has said.
Paul Little, who heads up the £228 million City of Glasgow college, believes the country now has a world-class educational facility and a blueprint for similar institutions around the globe.
The twin site “super-college”, which has changed the city’s skyline, boasts a 619,000 square foot campus in the heart of the city and the Riverside Campus specialising in nautical science and engineering which dominates the banks of the Clyde.
It is the result of the merger of three colleges spread across 11 sites which took nine years to complete, yet only one of its 800 classrooms and learning spaces is a lecture theatre.
Mr Little said: “There was no point bringing four colleges together just to offer more of the same. We came together to be distinct and offer something world-class, and I think that’s something we have achieved.”
He added: “The challenge we set ourselves nine years ago was to become a centre of educational excellence for the many, and not just the few.
“Now every year we see 8,000 graduates going off into jobs or into further education. I believe that this will be the century of the college, and we are providing the blueprint for the rest of the industry in the UK. We are in a new renaissance of college education.
“The fact so many of our graduates enter the workplace is an indication of the confidence that industry has in the skills which we deliver.”
With more than three decades working in the education sector, Mr Little has a reputation in the industry as a visionary who has successfully led and reshaped five different UK colleges.
On Thursday he received the Legacy Award at The Herald’s Inspiring City Awards for his contribution to the City of Glasgow project.
Speaking afterwards, he dedicated the award to Team City, and said that gaining the support of the colleges’ educational and tertiary staff during the project had been the most rewarding aspect of the challenge.
He said: “We’re all delighted to be recognised with the Inspiring City Award.
“The college is an inspiring institution, with inspirational staff and world-class buildings, and I thought it was fitting that we received the award in between those two other world-class icons, Andy Murray and Billy Connolly.
“The City of Glasgow College is very much on the world stage, and it means a lot to us that we get the recognition of our home city and the Glasgow family.
“It is in the geographical heart of Glasgow, and we see ourselves as Glasgow’s college.”
The City of Glasgow College, which has Scotland’s first women-only engineering and construction classes, currently counts more than 40,000 students on its roll, making it the largest college in Europe.
It attracts entrants from more than 130 countries, and Mr Little added that its global reach was down to its world-class reputation.
Mr Little said: “We are attracting students from Africa, China, Singapore and across Europe. The college is exporting the very best in technical and professional education to the world, and not just Glasgow.”