• Bridging two worlds - COMPANY PROFILE: Cranfield University is much more than its well known school of management. A strong industry focus combined with research and development, and extensive ties with China, make this a unique meeting place between industry and academia, writes Janet Kealey.

One thing is certain: Cranfield University has no ivory towers. If tackling climate change and contributing to the war against terror and are not big enough real world issues, then there is the small matter of searching for emerging planetary systems in other galaxies, while at the same time getting on with the day-to-day task of teaching 10 per cent of the UK’s engineering postgraduates.

Cranfield University lies on an extensive site in Bedfordshire, between Bedford and Milton Keynes. The grounds, laid out in the 1940s, have a mature look with low brick buildings and a modern library, set among trees and grass. This peaceful location is, however, close to motorways, railway stations and airports and within easy reach of London. Cranfield is the only British university with a commercial airport within its boundaries: the airport is one of the 10 busiest in the UK in terms of number of flights. With almost 3,000 students, Cranfield is a compact, close-knit community. This is a wholly postgraduate university, so there is a businesslike look about the place, and a notable absence of students lounging around drinking and chatting.

The campus plan shows other unusual features: Nissan, Cabair College of Air Training and BHR Group are among 20 or so commercial tenants of the university.

It is this close relationship with industry that singles out Cranfield from other universities. A relationship that dates back to the university’s founding, as Jim Angus, director of development at the aerospace engineering department, explains: “At the end of the Second World War the government decided that there was a need to capture the technology developed in the war, and the university was set up to develop that technology.” Cranfield Aerospace now has 40 business clients from the aerospace and aviation sector, including strategic partners Rolls-Royce and Boeing - Cranfield has built scale prototypes of the blended-wing X48B military aircraft and tested them in the wind tunnel for fuel efficiency. The first flight is expected to take place later this year.

More than 13 per cent of Cranfield’s income comes from competitive research – the highest proportion of any UK university. Links with business are vital, with clients ranging from small specialised companies to international giants such as Nissan and Rolls-Royce. According to university publicity, “Our research income, measured as a percentage of our turnover, puts us as one of the top five research-intensive universities in the UK alongside Oxford, Cambridge, and London’s Imperial College and UCL.”

Altogether, 86 per cent of Cranfield’s income is competitively won with only 14 per cent coming from government.

For students, there is a choice of 140 taught MSc courses. After academic study from September to February, student time is sold to industry: students undertake group projects, followed by individual projects, according to the company’s requirements. Students are taught by staff with significant industrial experience, sitting alongside part-time, industry-based students. This ensures that they learn from those around them in addition to lecturers and gain an awareness of current challenges within industry and how they may be solved. It is a reflection of the practical nature of the courses that six months after graduating from Cranfield, 97 per cent of graduates are in employment.

“The key to our approach,” says Jim Angus, “is the importance of bringing management teaching together with industry. It is not an easy or a natural thing to bring disciplines together, but very useful.” To take climate change as an example - aviation is the number one target of the reformers - and on this topic Cranfield can bring together extensive expertise on aircraft design and on renewable energy technologies. There is a multidisciplinary approach to complex individual challenges, some of which are long-term (up to 50 years) and need long-term partnerships to undertake them.

In the technology park, there is a business centre offering six months rent-free accommodation to start-ups. Fledgling companies are also given business advice and technical support to help them develop into viable businesses.

Five schools
Cranfield cites its willingness to tackle defence as one of the key competitive advantages. The university’s five schools are defence, health, applied sciences, engineering and management. The university was recently awarded a 22-year contract to continue as academic provider to the Defence College of Management and Technology at the UK’s Defence Academy at Shrivenham, Wiltshire. Shrivenham is where Cranfield carries out classified work for the Ministry of Defence, and for the US government, and recently received visitors from China’s defence industry department, COSTIND. A defence MBA course will soon be offered there.

Some of the best precision engineering laboratories in Europe are to be found at Cranfield, the university claims, and production is on an industrial scale at some of these. Thirty academic staff are involved in automotive sector R&D, including Formula One. Located on campus is the Cranfield Impact Centre, one of two F1 impact testing centres in the UK, with a state-of-the-art crash sled capable of testing vehicles up to 1,200kg at 70km per hour. The centre is also testing transmissions, and fuel sytems, electronics.

Among current projects is the successor to the Hubble telescope, the ‘James Webb Space Telescope.’ This orbiting infrared observatory will be able to examine the first light in the universe and look at how galaxies are formed, the birth of stars and search for proto-planetary systems. Some of Cranfield’s laboratories have taken commercial responsibility for the mirrors, which are crucial to the project’s success; Cranfield is making the parts in two years which would have taken 20 years with conventional technology. Among other cutting-edge projects are nanotechnology sensors and DNA chips.

Another ongoing project, the Resilience Centre, tests preparations for major disasters. A life-sized replica of a jumbo jet fuselage is used to test escape procedures from jumbo jets.

The applied sciences department specialises in utilities: water, conventional and new power, sewage treatment works, soil dynamics and erosion. According to Paul Kitson, head of corporate development, there are hopes that a new science park may be built in Milton Keynes, with a government energy research and development institute.

The school of health is multidisciplinary, covering topics from the supply chain to occupancy of beds in NHS, diagnostics and systems. Health issues relating to warfare and forensics are handled at Shrivenham.

Best known of the schools, the Cranfield School of Management is one of the highest regarded business schools in the UK (HM Treasury is a client).

International outlook
Cranfield University is international in many ways. Just under half of the students come from outside the UK, with 23 per cent of those coming from outside Europe. The university’s global reach applies to its research and consultancy work as well as to numerous partnerships with universities throughout the world.

Among these international partnerships are a large number in China. Cranfield was one of the earliest British universities to arrange student exchanges with China, receiving its first intake of Chinese students only two years after the exchanges began in 1978. Among this first group, from China’s three leading aerospace universities, was the future president of Beijing University of Aerospace and Astronautics, Shen Shituan. Over the intervening years ties have been established with a further nine universities in China, most recently Shanghai Jiaotong, helped by funding from the European Commission’s Asia-Link programme.
Beijing University of Aerospace and Astronautics is now a key partner of Cranfield. The two universities jointly offer a double degree programme - two-year masters’ degrees, with one year in Beijing and one in Cranfield, ending in the award of two postgraduate degrees. “Chinese students particularly value the exposure to British companies that the course gives them,” says the international development officer, Andrew Ashdown. BUAA students participate in projects with leading UK companies and develop their project management skills.

Another close academic partner in China is the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). The partners are now preparing courses for executives in transnational companies in China.

So far the university has not attracted any direct Chinese investment, but sees this as an area of much potential expansion, and is exploring ways to attract it.

Against the normal practice in China, Cranfield made a policy decision to recruit directly, rather than employing agents to attract students. The number of MBA students grew rapidly, and peaked in the late 1990s to early 2000s, but has dropped since. Cranfield is now seeking a higher profile in China.

Despite several long-term agreements with Chinese corporations, finding funding for students from China is becoming more difficult, admits Graham Heard of Cranfield School of Management. In the past the university has educated Chinese high-fliers under the Foreign Office-sponsored Chevening scholarships scheme, but the scheme is now under revision, and student numbers are down. China’s Ministry of Finance and the British government jointly fund another group of students.

The state-owned aviation corporation Avic 1 recently renewed a long-standing agreement, and values the relationships it makes with potential clients through training its staff at Cranfield. There are also agreements by which the Chinese shipping line Cosco and four or five other Chinese companies give bursaries, with Cranfield contributing one free place for every three bursaries they give, but these will run out in the not-too-distant future. So Cranfield is looking for more companies to sponsor students or to partner with in other ways. As Graham Heard points out, “The students of today are the highly trained staff of tomorrow.”

British and Chinese companies, take note!For more information, see: www.cranfield.ac.uk