University of Cumbria Ambleside campus sell-off will lead to 'collapse'

10:56am Friday 7th November 2008

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PLANS to scrap undergraduate training would suck the ‘lifeblood’ from a South Lakeland university campus leading to its total collapse, claims an MP.

Bosses at the University of Cumbria are planning to sell off assets in Ambleside - which they value at £18 million - and transfer undergraduate provision to campuses in Carlisle, Penrith and Lancaster.

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It is also planning to convert buildings in Ambleside into specialist conference facilities.

Tim Farron, MP for Westmorland and Lonsdale, said only top research institutes were capable of sustaining campuses without undergraduates.

“The thought that they could sustain that campus just on conference facilities and post-graduates is beyond me,” he said. “It just doesn’t stand up unless you are a top research institution like Oxford or Cambridge. For the rest you need that lifeblood of undergraduates to make a campus work.”

Mr Farron, who worked for more than 13 years as a manager in higher education, with Lancaster University and the former St Martin’s College, said if undergraduates left Ambleside, the Rydal Road campus would disappear within five years.

“In my partly educated view, I think if they were to get rid of undergraduate provision it would fail in four or five years.”

The gloomy economic forecast, and the plummeting prices of property were also reasons why the university should reconsider its scheme, said Mr Farron.