UNIVERSITY COLLEGE BIRMINGHAM

University College Birmingham is based in Birmingham City Centre, there are 7, 500 students on Further and Higher Education programmes including 1100 international students from 65 countries.

The origins of our College can be traced back to the late nineteenth century with the foundation of a Municipal Technical School offering cookery and household science courses. The School operated from a number of sites around the City and the archives record the establishment of a cookery room in 1916 and domestic cookery classes in 1918. In 1927 the name of the School was changed to the Central Technical College. By the 1950s the College had been renamed the College of Technology and a department of Bakery and Domestic Science had been established. In 1956 Birmingham's Chief Education Officer, E L Russell, recommended to the Local Education Authority the setting up of a separate college dealing with catering, bakery and domestic science. The new College of Bakery, Catering, Domestic Science and Associated Studies opened to students in 1957. The following year, the name was changed yet again to the Birmingham College of Food and Domestic Arts. The College continued to operate on many sites across the City until 1968 when HRH The Duke of Edinburgh opened our main site in Summer Row. Another name change, in the late 1980s, to the Birmingham College of Food, Tourism and Creative Studies, was designed to recognise the diversification of the College's programmes. On 1st April 1993, as a result of the Further and Higher Education Act (1992), the College was removed from the control of Birmingham City Council and became part of the newly formed Further Education Sector. This new found independence brought many opportunities including additional funding, the ability to increase student numbers and to offer new programmes. Independence also brought new responsibilities such as increased public and legal accountability and the need to manage physical, human and financial resources effectively. The College rose to these challenges to become the most successful institution in the Sector.